


Bloodlines

by JessicaPendragon



Series: Fenfel [3]
Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Art Included!, F/M, Future Fic, Inquisition AU, NSFW chapter is labeled and can be skipped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-25
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-08-10 23:01:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 57,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7864885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JessicaPendragon/pseuds/JessicaPendragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Veil’s destruction Thedas is whole again and growing towards peace, but not everyone has survived and not everyone can forget. Felix Pavus has felt stuck living in the shadow of ghosts and it all starts to change when he meets with a mischievous elf. Neither know of the lines drawn with the blood of the fallen made between them or how tangled their fates will become.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Likeness of Vaxus Trevelyan

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ajir](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ajir/gifts).



> An Au of an Au mixed with another Au featuring my Solavellan baby and my buddy's Pavelyan baby.

He is told it is an exacting replica. 

There is no doubt that the sculptor is very skilled. The details are incredible- the curls look like they could be swept away by a gentle hand, each individual hair of stubble across broad jaw done with painstaking patience, scars varying in depth and character. There are even fine lines pulling up a light smile, so lifelike he thinks at any moment the alabaster will flake away and reveal living skin beneath.

 _The Likeness of Vaxus Trevelyan_ it says on a polished plaque below. A veritable masterpiece it is, but it is not how he remembers his Papa. 

His smile was always bigger, the curls on his head askew and frizzy in the humid, summer air, his skin warmer and rougher and alive in a way no chisel could recount. Such a man was not made for the rigid trappings of stone, lifeless and cold and contained. He would have been better immortalized by an acorn- a thing that would grow sturdy and tall, protective arms reaching out to shade those who sought refuge. Maker knows some of that strength would be helpful today.

“Felix! Where is that-ah, there you are.” He doesn’t turn around to see who sweeps into the room. He’s known that voice all his life, can identify each clang of heavy chain and rustle of thick fabric belonging to stately robes. “Planning on avoiding your own celebration all night?”

“Is that an option?”

A quiet huff of laughter. “Of course not.”

Dorian comes to stand by his side and turns attention to the sculpture. Together they are always affected by its presence, although Felix would never pretend to be as burdened. There is loss for them both but more so for his father, grief dredged from a long well of memory when his is but a teacup in comparison. He has often wondered if it is a blessing or a curse that there was such little time shared before treachery tore them all apart. 

“He would be proud of you, just as I am.”  A hand drops upon his shoulder, squeezing with reassurance. It is a difficult thing to refrain from shrugging away - not from the touch but the deep emotions coating the sentiment. He tries for levity to break away the lump inside his chest.

“You’re only proud because I’m following in your footsteps.”

“It certainly added some points in your favor.” Dorian smiles, the edges of eyes crinkling with laughter. “I jest, I hope you know. No matter what I would be proud of you. But if you truly wanted to make me happy you would consider a proposal-”

At that Felix does shrug away, sighing as only one pressed by the good intentions of parents can. “Father.”

“You can’t blame me for trying. Come, our adoring flock awaits to congratulate the latest altus to join their ranks.”

Felix pauses when he reaches the door and glances back at the statue. Tonight he’ll be swarmed by the elite, dine and dance with magisters, enchanters and other altus, even a few special guests from far away lands and other important people, but he can only seem to think about the one who won’t be there.

They announce his father first and the assembled guests bow low for the Archon of Tevinter. Even after twenty years, Felix doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to it - all the eyes turned down in respect, the earnest praises and the halfhearted attempts at clever flattery, the endless traditions needing to be honored. Thankfully, they only politely clap for him and place a wreath of gold leaves atop his head.

With the ceremony over, the musicians pick up their instruments and the revelers pick up their wine glasses to begin another night of feasting and festivities. “Do try to enjoy yourself,” Dorian whispers in his ear before he disappears into the crowd. 

Felix takes a breath and steels his nerve for what will no doubt be a night like all the rest. “I’ll try.”

 

art by trashwarden

 

art by @badasserywomen


	2. A Ribbiting Affair

He doesn’t have a terrible time, all things considered.

There are fire eaters and acrobats dancing between the thick columns of the hall, performers from the latest opera that give a rousing, private showing, spells lighting up the dark sky in colors and shapes. A gathering that will be remembered for the rest of the season and likely beyond that, as is expected of the Archon himself. If anything, Felix appreciates that all the night’s activities provide almost constant distractions so he can participate without having to spend a lot of time stuck in dull and droll conversations alike. 

The current discussion he’s found himself roped into is providing to be a greater test of wills than the gauntlet he ran to become an altus. He thinks about his warm, comfortable bed, the latest epic poem full of warriors and strange beasts half finished on his night stand. The _quiet_. Maybe an hour more and he can convince his father to let him disappear-

“What do you think?”

“Uh.” With a jolt he focuses on the magister before him again. He’s forgotten the question, forgotten the noble’s name completely. “I, well-”

“Felix!” An arm wraps around his shoulder to draw him close in a flash of blonde hair and silver threads and he is grateful to see his aunt suddenly standing so close. “I’m so sorry to interrupt, but would you mind if I borrowed young Master Pavus? Official party business.”

There is no time given for an answer as he’s whisked away to the other side of the hall. When they reach a more secluded area, Maevaris lets out a sigh. “That man’s drivel can only be combated by magister level training. Some days I don’t even know how I survive it.”

“Thank you, Aunt Mae.” 

“Of course. I’d ask how your night has been but I think I can tell with that grouchy look on your face.”

“I don’t look grouchy,” Felix answers, frowning, and Maevaris snorts at the sight. As a tray of sparkling wine passes, she gracefully scoops one up and rolls the stem between fingers.

“How many marriage proposals?”

“Four so far.”

“Only four? For such an occasion as this there should be at least ten. Your father will be scandalized.”

“As if this family exists in any other state of being.”

Mae smiles and takes a quick drink. “Too true. I was wondering if-”

But the next words she speaks are not words at all. She _croak_ s. They both stare at one another, eyes widening in shock. Mae tries to speak, hand coming up to wrap around her throat, and yet the result is the same - a string of amphibious noises that sound very little like speech at all.

Felix hears the noise behind him from a fellow altus, from the magister whose name he can’t remember, from one of the bedazzled opera stars. Soon everyone in the area is bugged eyed and croaking like frogs, some high pitched with panic and others deep with confusion. He feels like if he blinked hard he would find himself in a swamp instead of the palace. 

“What in the Maker’s name is going on?” Dorian bustles through the crowd to reach them, two guards behind him looking unsure if they should draw their weapons or not. 

“I don’t know. We were just standing here-”

Mae thrusts her drink out to Dorian, giving it a little impatient shake. He takes it and brings the dark liquid to his nose, sneezing after taking a sniff. “A transformation potion. Kaffas! We’re lucky it was something so juvenile. It might wear off quickly but just in case head to the laboratory and fetch my travel pack. The remedies in there should be all I need.”

Felix races through the upper gardens and wraps around the building, taking the stairs two at a time to reach the massive tower. The smell of ancient parchment and elfroot slams into him as he weaves in between piles of books and alchemy equipment to reach the massive desk at the center and the pack sitting at one of the edges. As he returns he wonders who could have gotten passed their security. There are so many magical traps and wards, made by his father no less, set in place to protect them. No one without an invitation or favor should have been able to break through the barrier at all, at least not without notifying everyone. The world without the Veil is still an unmapped landscape, however - perhaps there is something they missed?

He doesn’t have to wonder for long. They come barreling around the next corner and smash into him without warning. It is only with some luck that he manages to protect the precious items he’s carrying as they become a brief tangle of limbs, curses and capes. It is a woman, a fact he discovers by an accidental but informative touch. Beyond that it’s difficult to tell as she rights herself and shoots by him towards the inner gardens without a word of apology or explanation, only a bright smile that seems too sharp to be chagrined.

“Halt!” Another pair of guards give chase a few steps behind but pause when they see him standing there. “Master Pavus! The girl, we think she’s the one that poisoned the drinks.”

Felix glances at her disappearing figure for a moment before handing the potions to the nearest guard. “Take this to my father. I’ll handle her.”


	3. A Duel and a Deal

Felix catches up with her as she reaches the large, rectangular pond centered in the middle of the gardens. For a moment, he contemplates his next move. She’s too far away for a paralyzing glyph and any fire he calls forth would sizzle out before reaching her. He claps his hands together and summons fury from the sky instead. The lightning bolt strikes the ground where her next step would fall and she jolts back in shock.

“Stop! You’re coming back with me to pay for what you’ve done.”

She tilts her head to the side, considering, before she shrugs. “Nope.”

“I…what?”

“I’ve been in the palace dungeons already and I wasn’t that impressed. It was only a little prank. Did go wrong though. It was supposed to turn everyone green.” She laughs. “Well, have a good night. Congrats and all that by the way.”

“Stop!” he shouts again and calls forth a ball of fire now that they are closer. She dodges the first one easily. The second bounces off her barrier and careens into the bushes in a burst of burnt leaves and sparks. Something glows beneath the sleeves of her shirt before she lifts her arms and pulls upon the water from the pond. The wave crashes against his barrier, coating the sphere in raining rivulets that block his sight. Despite the grandiose display, Felix smiles to himself. He was worried she might turn out to be a rogue or warrior, but another mage he can certainly handle.

As the deluge falls away, he twirls his hands around one another, building a dense ball of flame crackling down the center. It will split close to its target and attack from behind- a rather ingenious creation that helped his marks during the altus test, but he never has the chance to let it loose. A knife slices through his barrier and the girl barrels through the cut made. The fire within his grip sputters out as she steps to his side and hooks her arm and leg through his. It’s all a little too fast to follow in his surprise and confusion, but he can recognize the hard impact of the ground as his back bounces against it well enough.

When the stars dancing across his eyes finally set, he finds her figure looming above him, a knee pressed gently into his chest and the reality of her victory a harsh thing to stomach. He was not expecting a physical match. Most of his opponents in the magisterium have been defeated from a distance and only a few use their staves as actually weapons for close combat. Not one of them has ever dared use steel against him. “But you’re a mage!”

A fingertip flicks the tiny tip of his ear. “We’re all mages now, lethallin.”

“I’m, I’m not- let me up!”

“Not what, an elf?” She tilts her head, inspecting him a little too closely for his liking. “Hm, well isn’t that-”

“There they are!” Felix tilts his head back to see a group of guards rushing from the palace. The pressure on his chest disappears and he looks back up to see his assailant giving him a playful salute.

“Time to go. Again, it’s been a pleasure.” She disappears in a shower of sparks, literally disappears - no tell tale outline or imprints left in the grass to give her away, and Felix stares with an annoyed frown in the last place she stood until one of the guards reaches out to help him stand again.

“Are you all right?” his father asks when he returns to the palace proper. The party has dispersed, cloth and spilled food indicating a hasty retreat by most, but Felix hardly cares that his celebration is ruined. It will no doubt still be the talk of Tevinter although now for another reason and he only cares that his personal reputation might be muddled by the girl’s getaway.

“I’m fine. She escaped,” he mumbles.

“Bested, were you?”

“She…tricked me. I won’t be fooled again.”

“A little surprising considering her painful lack of skills in creating this potion. It was concocted with frog legs, of all things. Not a serious threat by any means but it apparently leaves an unpleasant aftertaste.”

“I do believe I used more colorful language than that,” Mae says between sips of water and bites of bread. “Ugh.”

“She meant to turn everyone green.”

“You spoke? Tell me, did this prankster happen to be an elf with blonde hair? With a laugh that scratches against your brain?”

“No, why?”

Dorian shakes his head, a small smile tugging at a corner of his mustache. “Nothing. Just a moment of nostalgia. Why don’t you retire for the evening, Felix? There is little else left to do here and we can discuss everything tomorrow.”

He doesn’t protest. His clothes are rumpled and burned in a few places, and the fight has left a needle of annoyance digging into his brain that’s causing his head to hurt. Thankfully his rooms are blissfully quiet and cool. For a brief moment he entertains the idea of a bath but instead settles for a wet cloth to wipe across his skin. Now that the excitement has faded, fatigue has settled in. He’s too tired to even reach for the novel on his nightstand and instead plummets into the welcoming pillows of his bed.

He thinks about the duel, or his botched attempt at one. For so long he’s begged his father to allow him to train with sword and shield, or even a bow and arrow, but most of his attempts have been in vain. He gave up trying when his father found him swinging the Trevelyan sword around one day. The memory of Dorian’s heavy look wasn’t worth the battle anymore. Maybe now, however, they can both reconsider it in light of tonight’s escapades.

When he’s close to finally drifting into the Fade, a voice that’s growing familiar echoes around him. “I didn’t trick you, by the way.”

Felix shoots up from his sheets to find the girl perched at the edge of his window, one leg swinging with carefree abandon. “You!”

They stare at each other for a few long moments as he wrestles with the idea of calling for help or blasting her out into the night. Somehow he thinks neither of those options would result in much considering their previous encounters and she doesn’t move to attack him. He’s not sure what this person wants from him but can’t deny his own curiosity about all of her successes throughout the evening.

“How…is our security really this bad?”

“Not really. I‘m just good at being in places I shouldn’t be.”

“Clearly. Are your people planning some sort of attack?”

“No! My friends and I heard there was a big, fancy party for the Archon’s son tonight and someone dared me to crash it.”

“This was all a dare?” She shrugs at his disbelief. “Fine. Your so very mature prank worked. I’m sure everyone will be impressed. What are you doing here still then? What do you want from me now?”

“I _didn’t_ trick you. Just because you weren’t expecting my attack doesn’t mean I cheated. This place relies too much on magical protection. Just like you.” 

“I…” Felix sighs and plops back down on his bed. “Great, thanks. And I’m so sorry I besmirched your _honor._ Now get out of my room before I change my mind and call the whole palace here.”

“I could teach you.”

“What?”

She hops down from the window and walks towards him. “I could teach you how to fight like I do, or at least protect yourself better from someone who fights like me. In return, you could teach me about alchemy? I’ve never had a great teacher or well, I might have never listened too great to one. I promise I won’t use my new skills against your family again either. What do you say, Master Pavus?”

She stops a few feet away from him and he sees her eyes clearly for the first time- a bright yellow that he’s not sure how he missed before, full of mischief and challenge that seem too plain to be anything but honest. He’s met plenty of snakes in his time within the court already, and reaching out to take her offered hand is most likely still a mistake, but he thinks of his father’s sword and a hundred unfulfilled wishes to be just like him.

“Deal…?”

She gives him a smile and a little bow of her head. “Fenera. My name is Fenera.”


	4. What Could Go Wrong?

Agreeing to this insane partnership is the easy part. Managing to sneak it past his father is the real challenge. Felix could tell him about random sparring lessons with the croaking culprit from the party or he could simply jump off the nearest cliff and save everyone the trouble. And of course there’s the fact that he is the _Archon’s_ son too - it’s not like he can simply waltz through the capitol as he pleases. There has been peace in Tevinter for many years, but they are never truly safe. It takes a few days of careful planning with his new acquaintance, thanks to her frustrating ability to sneak past all the palace defenses, before he broaches the subject. 

“I met someone.” The papers in front of Dorian’s face fold down to show a curious expression and Felix forges on. “At the academy. They’re here for one of the exchange programs with Ferelden.”

“And does this person have a name?”

“Her name is Gwendolyn,” he replies and his father’s eyebrows shoot up. All of his lies are true, in some way. There are hundreds of students that come to study from the different nations around Thedas and this year one of them happens to be a Gwendolyn Thorburn. Felix even met her at the beginning of courses when one of his friends dragged him to the festival. She seems nice enough, although she certainly isn’t an infuriating elf. 

“ _Her,_ you say?” Dorian drops his documents to the table, forgotten, just as Felix thought he would. The subject of his social life is always of greater interest to the Archon. “How interesting.”

“Yes,” he says with a sigh, hoping his cheeks are coloring with embarrassment. He is hot inside from the thrill of this game and the guilt. There have been lies between them, little things like if he really went to bed on time instead of staying up to read, and this will be the biggest one yet. He resists the urge to wipe his sweaty palms against his pants. “She’s having trouble with her alchemy class and asked for my help. I was hoping we could stay after classes a few days a week? I won’t let it interfere with my magister training, I promise.”

“Why not study here? I daresay our laboratory is just as well stocked.” 

The annoyance Felix shows this time doesn’t need to be feigned. “So you can hover over us the whole time?”

“I would nev-fine, I would. You know me all too well. Of course I approve. Just make sure you speak with Aedelicus so he may adjust your guard as needed. Naturally you will still need to be guarded although I see no reason why they must remain in the room at all times once it is made secure.”

Felix expected to be saddled with his bodyguards but also expected Dorian’s persistent encouragements towards any direct contact with the female persuasion. This is all a little too easy and his shame grows a little bigger because of it- he is using one of his father’s greatest desires against him, but his own desire for this chance to do something for himself for once is still greater than anything else. 

“And you have my express permission to do other activities. A walk in the park, perhaps? An afternoon at the carnival? We always have standing reservations at the Palazzio. Really Felix, anything but endless studying.”

“Yes I got it, thank you. I’m leaving now.” 

“And I’d love to meet her sometime soon!” Dorian calls after him as Felix flees from the room. 

They wait a few days before meeting at the university. He barely recognizes Fenera as she walks out of the crowd in the hallway with hair wrapped up in a red cloth that smartly covers her ears. Gone is her leather apparel and instead she wears a simple cotton dress with a tonic belt and a bag slung over her shoulder - the standard look for alchemy students, although it seems strange on her.

She gives a little bow. “Good afternoon, Your Highness. Thank you so much for agreeing to tutor me. What a lovely day, would you not agree?” She says it all in a voice that is much higher and nasally than normal and makes him cringe. 

“I uh, yeah. It’s great.”

“Everything is clear inside,” one of his guards announces as a pair of them emerge from the laboratory beyond. “If you wouldn’t mind, my lady, we must search you as well.”

“Oh! Of course.” She hands over her bag and submits to their inspection, giving a nervous laugh when the sides of her dress are gently padded down, and Felix wonders how she manages the spread of blush across her cheeks. For the few days he’s known her personal boundaries haven’t been one of her concerns. A part of him is nervous that she is mad enough to bring actual weapons, but the moment passes by without a hitch.

“We will wait outside. If you should need anything, let us know,” says the guard as he hands back Fenera’s things. 

“What was with all that?” Felix asks when the door is soundly shut behind the both of them. As she yanks free her braid from the head wrap, he sets to placing a ward around the wood and lock. It won’t prevent his bodyguards from entering but it will let him know when the door is opening and give them time to get into position. 

“I was going for a sweet, Ferelden noble.”

“You sounded stupid.”

“Is that not the same thing?” He gives a laugh at that. “Is the spell ready?”

“Yes I spent all night finishing it. Watch.” Felix reaches into his own pack and pulls out a small brass trinket with a glittering emerald set in the middle. When he sets it down on the nearby workbench small rings start to rotate around the middle and after a few heartbeats a bright green light springs up and spreads about. It transforms into images of Felix and Fenera working diligently over books and boiling tubes of potions. 

“Wow that’s awesome!” She runs her hand through her own image and it scatters like ripples across a pond before righting itself again. “I was expecting something like those projections they have at the opera house but these look so real. I bet you’d get millions for this invention.”

“There’s about an hour before it will repeat and now I’ll have to change it since you decided to improvise your voice.” He fiddles with a tiny tool and presses it into one of the connectors. “Say something.”

Fenera puts her forearm against her head and bends backwards. “My dear princeling, I was so afraid you wouldn’t be able to go through with this devious ploy after all but lo, here you are. I shall never doubt you again! You are truly a magnificent, highly skilled, handsome-”

“All right, all right. Please stop.” For a terrifying moment he thinks this is all a horrible idea. He should fly back home and tell his father the truth and simply beg him to reconsider his stance on weapons training. The disappointment he’ll face if they’re ever caught is surely a bigger threat than any sword will ever be. Instead he points the instrument at her. “I hope you’re not wasting my time. If I went through all this trouble for nothing-”

“I’m not one to disappoint. Most of the time. Why does your dad hate the idea of you training anyway?”

“It’s a long story and none of your business. Come on.” He leads her into the attached room in the back. It’s open in the middle with dummies and furniture lined up against the wall. “This is where we practice with some of the more volatile formulas. Is it big enough?”

“Sure. No windows means no one will see our secret activities either.”

“What did you say to your parents to convince them?”

“It’s none of your business,” she says, mocking his tone but with a smile. “For one thing I don’t live with them anymore and they never stopped me from doing whatever I wanted when I did. I also happen to come from a talented line of liars.”

“That’s…not really comforting. So how are we going to begin? I’ve read dozens of books on different fighting styles and stances over the years. Have you heard about the Brosca technique?”

“Ugh, you sound like my brother. Show me a stance you remember.”

He spreads his legs and sinks lower, hands opening up and coming to block his face. Fenera circles around him once before stopping at his side and gives a shove with her hip. It isn’t anything hard but still Felix finds himself tripping over his tangling feet and crashing to the ground. Her grin has turned smug when he looks up but at least she’s not outright laughing. 

“Sorry. My trainer did it to me too and I couldn’t resist. You should get used to this angle though. It’s going to happen a lot, trust me.” She holds out her hand and pulls him back up. “Ready to really learn something?”

“Yes,” he says, scowling and rubbing at his backside.

“We’ll start easy then. Lesson number one, don’t get knocked over…”


	5. Lesson Twenty-Nine

Felix isn’t exactly made for warrior work. It becomes obvious during one of their meetings when he can barely lift his arms with sweat pouring from every inch of his body. Mages in earlier ages trained with heavy staves, but with the Fade in the very air they breathe now it’s no longer necessary. Some mages, like his father, still feel lost without them. Felix would have taken the unnecessary inconvenience for the consequential muscle tone if he knew he would need it so much one day.

So he begins to work outside of their sessions. Every morning he wakes and runs around the palace grounds, uses the guard’s barracks and their sturdy weights to make himself stronger. Dorian notices of course, but Felix never touches a sword or shield where anyone can see. If there’s a change in him let them think it’s because there’s someone he wishes to impress which is a fine enough excuse for his father.

And he does change. He becomes less winded during Fenera’s lessons, feels more energized throughout the day. One of the maids dares even suggest he’s smiling more before his scowl sends her away giggling out of sight. His deceptive invention has worked perfectly, fooling everyone who has come into the laboratory to seek them out. He’s even grown somewhat fond of Fenera. Not genuine affection, but something close to friendly tolerance. Despite her vulgar sense of humor, blasé attitude and flirtations, she’s not horrible once you get her set on task. 

More often than not now he finds her more than tolerable, even looks forward to seeing her after a dull day of studies. It’s been awhile since he met a new friend, especially one that doesn’t care one bit about his station within Tevinter. She never asks for favors or court gossip, doesn’t try to play any of the manipulative games of nobles that he grew very tired of right out of the womb. When they do talk it’s about positions and battle strategies, or during breaks random pranks she’s pulled recently or interesting tales from the lower city levels. He rarely ever talks about himself and that seems fine with her. A strange partnership, but one that seems to work out in his favor.

Everything is going better than he could imagine, which should have been his sign it would all go belly up soon. 

Fenera waits for him in the room adjoining the lab but she isn’t alone. There is a spirit floating next to her, silver and blue and white, face and body hidden behind heavy armor. It’s quite a shock- sometimes Felix will see them floating around campus or through the streets, but the wards set around the palace keep them at bay from his life and thoughts most days. 

“What’s this?“ 

"This is my good friend Honor. They’re going to help you train,” Fenera announces. “There’s only so much I can do, you know. I can help with forms and hand to hand, daggers, but I have the same knowledge about swords and shields and all that as you do." 

"Good to meet you, young sir,” greets Honor in a booming voice.

Fenera rolls her eyes when Felix continues to stand there, grimacing and immobile. “Please tell me you’re not one of _those_  people still prejudice against spirits. I did notice your repelling spells while I was sneaking around them.”

“No! It’s only…are you sure this is a good idea?”

“Honor trained my mother and helped me too. They’re trustworthy. There is a payment, though.” Instantly his mind goes to nefarious contracts, possessions and demons running through the hallways, but the truth is the last thing he would think of. “Dirty jokes.”

“E-excuse me?”

Fenera puts her hand close to her mouth, feigning secrecy. “Honor has a little bit of a naughty side. Do you have any you’d like to offer?”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Of course you don’t, _Lord_ Pavus. Fine, I’ll pay.”

“You are serious.”

She sends him a look. “Ahem, let’s see. Ah, what do a penis and a puzzle box have in common? The more you play with them, the harder they get.”

“Oh, how dreadful. Truly,” Honor says while shaking their head, but there’s a small, pleased smile on their lips. “Shall we get started then?”

It takes a while to get over his mortification and the fact that he is practicing with a spirit of all things, but Honor is intelligent and skilled, a patient but demanding teacher, and Felix almost forgets the nature of his new instructor with all the new poses and tactics swarming in his head by the end. Almost everything on him aches afterwards, in new places he never even though of before, but he’s coming to appreciate what it means instead of focusing on the pain. 

“You did well, young sir,” Honor praises. “We’ll have to work on keeping that left arm up though, but I am confident in your abilities. Aryon’al Ilu Vistanel has taught you well so far.”

“Thank you. Will you be returning?”

“Of course they will,” Fenera answers. “We made a deal, one which involves not ever telling my father. Right?”

“I do not go back upon my word. It would be against my nature to do so. Which, if you wouldn’t mind…”

“Yes, yes. Your payment, you dirty old bugger. What does the sign say on a closed brothel? Beat it, we’re closed!”

Honor lets out a chuckle that chokes off as soon as they realize it’s slipping from their mouth. “So childish. Well, until next time!” The air wobbles and folds in upon itself, taking the spirit with it as they return to the Fade. 

“What did they call you?” Felix asks later after they’ve cleaned up the training space and returned to the laboratory proper. He peels off his outer work shirt and replaces it with the one he wore throughout the day. So far it’s been enough to save him from questions before he manages to get into the bath house and Fenera has been smart enough to keep any bruises far from his face. She has no problem giving him some everywhere else. “Ar something?”

“Huh? Oh, nothing. Just a nickname,” Fenera says as she pulls her own shirt up and over her head. He looks away quickly, heat building up beneath his skin that has nothing to do with training today, but it’s already too late. When he blinks he can still see the outline of her, the sweat lined strip of her undergarments, and those strange, glowing violet tattoos that apparently run across more of her than her arms. “Are you okay?”

“Wha-Yea, yes, I’m fine,” he replies while decidedly looking at the cover of _An Alchemist’s Encyclopedia_ on the table before him. “Those tattoos are, uh, interesting. Are they something Elven?”

“No they’re _mine_. Well, a few people have begun to copy me because after all it is a brilliant idea. I call them Revallas. It means freedom writing.”

“They remind me of Fenris’ tattoos,” Felix says, thinking of the slave rebellion leader from years’ past.

“Exactly! That’s where I got the idea from.”

“Is there a reason for them or do you just like to be flashy?” He wouldn’t put the latter passed her, knowing her for even the short few weeks he has.

“The ‘flashy’ part is magic, can’t you tell? Oh and for fuck’s sake you can turn around, Felix.”  

When he does he finds her fully clothed again and wrapped up in the costume of Gwendolyn Thorburn. “Magic?”

“Yes.” She rolls back the sleeve of her arm to reveal glistening marks upon her forearm. “Go ahead, touch them.”

He does so, slowly, his own curiosity outweighing other concerns. It’s foolish, really. They’ve touched countless times already during combat or when she’s had to show him a proper stance, but outside their sparring space interacting with her seems, well, ill advised and complicated. Complicated in a way that he doesn’t need.

The marks thrum beneath his fingers, like a drum beat felt through the walls. “It’s magic weaved into skin,” Fenera explains. “I pull defensive spells into my designs mostly. Some of my friends store other things, like massive area spells or shape shifting, or just extra when it’s needed.”

“I’ve heard of spell weaving,” he says, concentrating on the feel of the magic beneath his fingers and completely ignoring a strange electricity circling his heart the longer his skin is against hers. “Lots of singing and dancing or some such nonsense.”

She laughs. “Nonsense? It’s only the easiest and best way to interact with the Fade without the Veil. I could teach you, you know. Lesson…what are we on? Twenty something.”

There is something alarming in her expression when he looks up. She has that same old grin, something a cat would wear while playing with its catch, but it’s more than just teasing now. It’s warmer somehow and sends little shocks to mix with this humming building inside his chest and it’s wrong, but…Her brow raises not in a challenge but questioning, and it is an answer he is not prepared to give to anyone, ever.

“No, not interested,” he answers with a little more heat than intended maybe, pulls his hand away with unnecessary speed bordering on disgust, but the last thing he wants is ancient Elvhen lessons or to feel _that_ again.

“Sorry for offering,” Fenera mumbles as she jerks her sleeve back in place. 

He could say that he’s sorry too, that he shouldn’t have been so short with her, or that it isn’t her fault. He could make some self-deprecating joke and put that easy smirk back on her face and everything would go back to normal. But he doesn’t. Felix lets her leave without another word between them, the hand he used to touch her wrapped up in a tight fist.

Because he’s going to be a strict follower of Lesson Twenty-Nine: Never, under any circumstances, fall in love.


	6. The Right Ingredients

He thinks about not going back. 

Every hour builds his anxiety over what happened and everything else he is doing. It’s foolish. They could be caught at any moment. What will he even do with all this training? He can’t ever use it out in the real world especially with his father in sight or else his secret wouldn’t be one for much longer. And his father…he thinks about blurting it out at dinner that night. Surely his rage will be better than the betrayal if, when, Dorian discovers what his son has been really doing instead.    

In the end, however, he goes to bed without confession and makes his way to the university when he wakes up. His guilt he crams down with a quick breakfast and as for facing Fenera again- he imagines if he doesn’t show up  _she’ll_ show up in his window again so there’s little point in avoiding her for long. After classes she is there sitting atop the laboratory table when he walks inside and hops down to meet him. A hand plays with the long tail of her braid and she doesn’t quite meet his gaze while he is doing his best to do the same. 

With a deep breath he prepares himself to be the one to break the silence. “I-“

“I-” they both say at the same time. Laughter follows, broken and awkward.

“I started mixing the potion base before you got here,” Fenera says. “We are going to study alchemy today for once, right? I do actually get something out of this agreement besides the chance to knock you on your ass sometimes?”

He relaxes, thankful for her distraction. “Yes. Considering the mess you made last week I think you need more practice than I do.” She narrows her eyes at him but there’s a smirk on her lips. “Did you practice at all?”

A hand wavers back and forth. “Eh.”

“You’re never going to get better if you don’t practice.” 

“I did practice a little. I finally managed to turn my brother’s skin green instead of making him sound like a frog a few days ago. Although I kind of liked the noises.”

Felix rolls his eyes as he puts on a pair of gloves and a stained apron. “I haven’t even been teaching you that.”

“I know, but you’re such a good teacher that I’m already confidant in experimenting on my own. Congratulations.”

“I thought you might use this for more than pranks.”

She all but snorts. “Whatever gave you that impression? You say that like it’s a bad thing but trust me, my brother deserved it. He once turned my skin into scales.”

“And did you deserve that?” She doesn’t reply but the way her face scrunches up he knows the answer. With a laugh that’s no longer strained he hands her gloves of her own. “Let’s get started.”

Fenera is a much more patient teacher than she is a student. She oftentimes jumps ahead and rushes through steps, skips them all together, and tries to guess at measurements instead of being precise. More often than not such techniques lead to failure which only makes her more impatient and now grumpy that she hasn’t succeeded. He’s grown accustomed to her mood swings. Her anger is only ever on the surface, an easy thing to sweep out of the way and her tirades can be amusing too sometimes. He can’t really complain - he knows his own silent contempt when training probably is just as frustrating.

“How’d you get so good at this?” she asks with a pout after a while as she watches him demonstrate.

“My father taught me a lot outside of school. We have a lab like this in the palace-”

“Yeah, I know. I like the stained glass art. Very pretty.”

“You snuck in there too?” She gives a shrug. “You…nevermind.”

“You like this?” 

“I do. It’s simple. You mix the right ingredients, follow the instructions, and most of the time it will do what you want. I like predictable.” Which he’s learning is anathema to everything she is. “There, that should do it. Now we just have to wait about fifteen minutes until we can complete the last step.”

Fenera sighs and twists around on her stool. “Do you have something else to do?”

“I was planning on reading this-”

“Boring! How about a game? It’s a little silly but it’s better than you reading and me watching you read.”

“What is it?” 

“You ask each other questions, but they have to end or begin with the letter of the alphabet. So for A, something like ‘are you serious?’ or ‘do you like apples’? My mom came up with it to amuse us when we were little.”

His enthusiasm wanes. “I don’t know.”

“I know, I know. I promise I won’t ask you any questions involving your father or anything too personal, but come on! We’ve been working together for a month and I barely know anything about you. Don’t make me go to a library to read about you.”

“I’m surprised you know where to find one,” he says dryly, loathing the idea that there are books out in the world with his life inside the pages. It’s not a surprise considering his father’s position, but it’s unnerving all the same.

“Your library is nice enough. I really enjoy that one red chair in the corner. It’s great for lounging and a complete blind spot to the patrol guards. Do you have information about yourself? Is it narcissistic to have your own books in your own library?”

“Maker. I’ll play if you promise to stop breaking into my house.”

“Deal! You go first.”

“Uh, okay.” He sits down and takes a breath. “Have you ever…been to Antiva?”

“Oh good one. Yes I’ve been there. And Ferelden, Orlais. Par Vollen a few times but never officially. I’ve been everywhere. How about an easy one for you, speaking of books. What is your favorite book?”

“I have an old book my father gave me. It belonged to his friend, Felix- the person I got my name from. It’s about math theory and-” Fenera shakes her head, laughing. “What?”

“You’re such a dork,” she says but with fondness. “You and my brother Ani would definitely get along. He gets all excited just like you about this stuff. It’s annoying from him but you…it’s cute.”

His neck suddenly feels very itchy and hot. “Right. My turn? Do you-do you like dogs or cats?”

“Dogs, obviously,” she answers although he’s not so sure how it’s obvious but he doesn’t get to ask. “What is something embarrassing that you’ve done? Is that too personal? Let me think of another one-”

“No, it’s fine. When I was younger I snuck into the stables to ride one of the horses without telling anyone. I think I wanted to go on an adventure or something. I tried to get on but…I fell off into a pile of feces. Don’t think my father has ever laughed so hard.” Fenera laughs again too, louder this time, and he can’t help but join in as her joy opens up a locked door inside his chest. “I can’t remember the last person I told that to.”

“And you told me?” She fakes surprise, expression silly but not unkind. “I’m honored.”

“All right, all right. Where did you learn so much Elvhen?” he asks a question he’s wondered for some time now. She speaks it with Honor or peppers her tantrums with what he can only imagine are vulgar things. It’s more common now but still hard to find a tutor or resources outside the new homeworld. He’s never been there, never been close. The thought of it catches his veins on fire, throws his mind into the dark, empty crypt where dreams went to die. 

Fenera tilts her head. “Where do you think I’m from?”

“Don’t you have to answer a question before asking another one? I mean, aren’t you from here? You,” he stands, suddenly surging with unease, “are you from Elvhenan?”

“Yes. I’ve lived in Arlahalam most of my life.” She watches his face carefully. “Is that a problem?”

Felix paces a few feet away. He thought she might be when they first met but since then, the way she easily comes and goes he just assumed she lived somewhere nearby and she’s not exactly like the few Elvhen he’s met. They are serious, reserved. Ancient. Gone as soon as they come if Dorian has any say in the matter, but their presence is felt for days after for all the memories and pain they bring. 

“No. I…no.” He doesn’t have a problem with the Elvhen- he has a problem with only two of them and what they did to his world, to his family. “It’s fine. I don’t want to talk about it anymore though, all right?”

He expects her to push the issue and has a heated retort on the tip of his tongue but instead she bumps into him with her hip. “Sure. The game is over.”

Relief washes over him and a little bit of guilt creeps in its place. The demons in his past are not her doing and for all her tricks and jokes she is earnest in this moment, concern softening the ever present lines of her smile to something stronger. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

This time her touch is more assured, a hand coming to his arm and giving a gentle squeeze. “Don’t worry. It’s a silly game anyway, remember?”

He should step away, shrug it all off with a self-deprecating joke perhaps or remind them both they have a potion to finish, but he doesn’t. He steps closer. There is a pause before she does the same - the distance between them still far, farther than they’ve been while training, but it’s all different somehow now. 

“Back to predictable things. But you know that clandestine meetings, designing contraptions to fool people, a human mage that uses a sword…not very predictable for the scholarly son of the Archon of Tevinter. Sounds rather adventurous.” 

“Yeah well, you know what happened the last time I tried to have an adventure.” 

Her fingers move down slowly, grasp around his forearm, and he feels little jolts of electricity tickle all the way. “Last time you didn’t have me.”

Lesson twenty-nine still blares through his mind somewhere but it’s all mixed up inside, a slosh of ingredients such as the color of her eyes, the way she plays with the end of her hair when thinking, her warm skin when he touched her markings. She’s right- lately he’s been more like that daring boy in the stables chasing heroes than anyone else. Maybe….

“Lord Pavus.” They both jump away from each other at the unexpected voice as a guard steps into the room with his eyes on Fenera. “There’s someone here wishing to see you. They claim to be Lady Gwendolyn Thorburn.”


	7. A Disconcerting Letter

There’s a moment of silence before Felix mutters a string of curses that has Fenera smiling with pride. He glances at her but she can only offer a shrug. He could refuse the lady entrance but there can be only one reason that she would show up knocking at their door and the realization sits heavy in his stomach.

“Let her in.” The door opens again and ushers in the real Gwendolyn Thorburn. She keeps her head down and a few strands of dark blond hair falling loose from her bun to brush against pale cheeks. 

“Lord Pavus,” Gwendolyn finally speaks up and gives a little curtsy. “I don’t know if you remember me. We’ve only really met the once but-”

“I do remember. How are you, Lady Thorburn?”

“Fine, thank you. And yourself?”

“Great. Your studies?”

“Good.”

The three of them stand in an awkward formation and Felix’s suspicions grow larger. “Was there something you needed?”

“I was hoping you could help clear up some confusion. As I was leaving my host family’s house today your-Archon Pavus was waiting for me. I didn’t speak to him directly but his litter waited on the street while a guard handed me this.”

Felix takes the rolled up parchment she offers. He knows the lettering within and can imagine his father writing it at his desk, a pleased smirk pulling up his mustache on one side. The note is short and invites Lady Thorburn for tea and a light lunch on the morrow while expressing excitement on finally meeting the girl he’s heard too little about.

“And I imagine he didn’t leave without your reply?”

“I accepted, of course,” she answers and Felix can’t blame her. One doesn’t refuse an invitation from the Archon of Tevinter. “But I…I’m sorry, but I don’t know what he meant in the letter? It made it seem like…as if we were…more than just mere acquaintances.”

“I’m the one that must apologize,” Felix says after a pause and barely recognizes his own voice. It’s steady, sure- it sounds a lot like his father’s when he gives decrees and he tries to picture Dorian in his mind. “This is all a misunderstanding. I may have mentioned your name while I was speaking to my father about tutoring my friend. You were always very good at alchemy. I thought you might be a better tutor than I.”

“Oh, thank you,” Gwendolyn says, a pretty blush surrounding her smile. 

“He must have misheard. You uh, know how it’s one ear and out the other sometimes. It’s impossible to talk to him when he’s working which is all the time, as you can probably imagine.”

“Of course. So, just a misunderstanding.”

“I believe so. Unless…you have other ideas?”

The blush on her cheeks becomes a darker red. “Oh no! I would never presume-”

“Good. I wouldn’t want anyone thinking you were trying to impose upon the Archon. This far into your studies such a scandal would be a hindrance. I know how hard the work is already.”

Gwendolyn looks a little panicked now. “Yes, thank you. I…but my invitation, I said-”

“I’ll handle that. I’m glad we were able to settle this.”

“I-I’m glad too. I should go, to class. Thank you for giving me your time. Good day.” She curtsies again and exits in a hurry. The lab falls silent but Felix hears a loud rush in his head as blood and adrenaline clash and settle. It leaves him breathing heavy, palms sweating. He feels like he just finished an event in the summer games.

“That was impressive,” Fenera says. “I doubt she’ll tell anyone now with the way you twisted it there in the end. She’ll be too embarrassed. I know you’re clever with all the planning and what not but where’d you pull that from?”

“I don’t know.” He takes a seat at the work table and throws his head in his hands. He does know - he watches his father and Aunt Mae talk circles around magisters never has any interest in such things himself. Yet that’s what he has been doing the moment he shook Fenera’s hand. 

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know!”

She sits down next to him after a moment, sighing. “Well, I can’t be Lady Gwendolyn Thorburn of Ferelden anymore. Your father has seen her face and it’s not mine. Honestly I’m surprised we managed this long without being caught. Go home and tell your father that…we had a big fight today and will no longer be working together. Or, you know, you could tell him the truth and that you want a real trainer to help you now. You’re an  _altus_ , a grown man. You can do what you want. Just maybe don’t mention me by name, ever.”

Felix lifts his head. “You wouldn’t train me anymore?”

“I may be crazy but I don’t have any desire to face the Archon of Tevinter’s real wrath and I think he’d be very wrathy with me.” She pats him on the shoulder.  “It was fun while it lasted, but our time is up. It’s for the best I think. For…many reasons. I wouldn’t want to, you don’t know-nevermind.”

“Wait. What is it?” He snatches her hand before she moves too far away and glances down at where they connect. Just yesterday he couldn’t wait to let go, to distance himself from whatever this feeling is creeping up like clever vines through his body. Now that he is faced with letting go for good he hesitates, even pulses his fingers around hers to grip tighter.

It is Fenera that pulls away this time. Her expression is serious, the constant sparkle of amusement dulled in her eyes. She takes a step back, then another, and tries to shrug away whatever has overcome her. She smirks like always, but now he can see the weakened edges of it. “It’s complicated, I’m complicated, and I know you don’t want any of that. Good luck with your father. I hope it works out. Bye, Felix.”

He doesn’t get to say goodbye as Fenera disappears in sparks and smoke. In the wake of her sudden departure he simply stands there for a few minutes, glancing down at the potion now ruined, thinks about the adjacent room and the equipment he painstakingly snuck in here that will never be used again. She is right - this lasted far longer than he thought it might and he’s learned a great deal. He should be happy with his success, should be ecstatic that he doesn’t have to live a lie anymore. So why is there a weight pulling his relief down?

Felix takes his time returning home, feet dragging and mind deep in thought. Several times he wavers between telling his father the truth and using something like Fenera’s convenient cover up. He’s not decided even as he walks through the palace door and down the corridors towards Dorian’s study. He plays out situations, arguments and counterpoints a few dozen times, plans for worst case scenarios. For a moment he stands outside the room with forehead pressed to the warm wood. He knows what he wants to do, what he needs to do. In the end it’s not about sword work at all and it’s time they both faced it.

With one last deep breath, he turns the handle and enters the room. Dorian reclines back in his plush chair but straightens when he sees Felix. For a moment there’s a pleasant smile spreading across his face before it softens somewhat. “I’m ready for my tongue lashing. It’s well deserved, I know, but you must appreciate my level of restraint thus far. I’ve surprised even myself. Go on then.”

Felix remains quiet, one foot itching to retreat and his eyes boring holes into the parchment piled upon the desk. He’s not sure where to start, if he should at all.  _Hello Father, I’ve been lying to you for months_ or perhaps  _Funny you should mention restraint, please don’t get mad but-_

“Ah, the silent treatment.” Dorian stands and makes his way forward. “I couldn’t help but notice how you’ve changed over the last few weeks. It’s been, well, infectious to say the least. I should know better than most how misguided it is to meddle in the love affairs of others, however. I overstepped. Miss Thorburn is under no obligation to visit, not until either of you deem fit, if ever. Although I hope it will be sooner than later. She’s rather lovely from what I could tell, a charming Ferelden beauty to be sure. Turned brighter than a Highever rose when she read my letter.”

“She’s, she’s not…we’re not-” Felix makes an annoyed noise. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

Dorian stops in front of him. “Is everything all right?”

The lie and the truth battle at the edge. He looks up into his father’s eyes, full of concerned sincerity and a trust that should never have been broken, and knows what he must do. “I-”

“Dorian!” Maevaris bolts through the door but stops short when she notices the occupants in the room. “Forgive me for interrupting Felix, but I must speak with your father. It’s fairly urgent.”

He wants to resist, to shout the truth so that the whole palace hears it, but with Mae in the room his nerve slips away. “Sure, of course. I’ll just be in my room then.”

“I’ll come find you when we’re finished,” Dorian promises. 

It’s more than two hours later when he does. Felix is propped inside his open window, gaze out towards the gardens. He thought about trying to sleep but his mind wouldn’t stop scrolling through all the things that are and all the things that could have been. Part of him keeps waiting for Fenera to show up at the ledge too with some irreverent quip that will make his eyes roll. The gardens are empty, however, save for the guards that pass by every once in a while. 

“What’s happened?” he asks without looking behind.

“Mae and I both received a disconcerting letter today. I must go to Val Royeaux at once to meet with the Divine and several other leaders.”

This garners his attention. Felix hops down from the window. “Why?”

“Under normal circumstances I would be more than happy to divulge state secrets to you, but this is…complicated. I need to know more, hence my visit to Orlais.”

“Can I come with you?”

“I want you here, preferably in the palace for the duration.” Dorian lifts his hand to stall the protests. “I’m not sure what will come of this meeting or what nefarious plans are already in the works. Stay where I know you’ll be safe, please.” 

Felix lets out a sigh, hearing the unspoken words that are always there when something dangerous or questionable is brought up between them.  _I can’t lose you too._ It’s an argument that’s kept him caged more than any lock and key or magic spell. “Fine.”

“Thank you. I should be gone only a few days, a week at most. Keep your message crystal handy.” Dorian claps him around the arms before pulling him in for a hug. It doesn’t linger long, but there’s a look in his eyes that does speaking of so much more to say, something that makes Felix fear what danger his father is walking into himself. 

The Archon leaves that night with Maevaris and a small squad of soldiers through an eluvian into the Crossroads and beyond into lower Thedas while Felix stays stuck within the palace. He tries to fill his time with study, slipping down to the alchemy tower to continue his magister thesis work, but with every ingredient and mixture he can’t help thinking about their little laboratory at the university and suddenly this one with its high shelves and sparkling equipment can’t compare. 

He tries to catch up on his reading, but instead of letting his mind drift through fantasy he imagines a million scenarios his father is facing and what could be so important to whisk him away and lock Felix away at the same time. It eats away at him like beetles worming their way between pages of parchment until by the end of the third day, no matter the quick assurances Dorian gives him through the crystal, he is an agitated ball of sleeplessness and worry.

That night he feels her long before he sees her. For a moment he keeps his back to the window, afraid this might just be another one of his fanciful ideas coming to life only to be thwarted by reality, but when he looks Fenera doesn’t disappear. Gone are the petticoats and frills of Gwendolyn Thorburn- she wears black leather and violet silk, dark kohl swiped from temple to temple across her eyes. She looks dangerous, like a predator poised still before the leap, but Felix takes a step forward towards the desperate gleam in her expression he’s felt inside for the last few days. 

Fenera reaches out. “Want to do something really stupid?”

He finds he’s not surprised to see her again. Somehow deep down he knew that this would happen and he’s not surprised, not anymore, when he takes her hand without hesitation this time. 


	8. Raising the Stakes

“What are we doing?” he asks once they’ve landed upon the palace grounds. 

Fenera bends over to riffle through the bushes nearby and comes away with a small sac that she throws his way. “Put those on. Can’t show up in nightclothes where we’re going.”

He glances inside to find slightly scuffed leather breeches and an embroidered green shirt. Common enough things merchants and shopkeeps wear for festivals. “And where are we going?”

“Does it really matter?” It’s said with almost a snarl. Something else is poised to explode from her mouth again, but Fenera takes a breath and instead turns away in an obvious attempt to avoid whatever it is and give him privacy in return. Felix looks at her with suspicion. It doesn’t matter where they’re going, not really, but he’s never seen her temper flare like this before - he’s never seen her really upset at all.

She takes his hand again once he’s changed and tells him to hold on. Magic ripples up his arm and through his body and the world seems to tilt for a few seconds. He doesn’t understand what’s happened until they travel further away from the palace and come across the first patrol. His first instinct is to recoil and hide, but Fenera keeps a tight grip on his hand.

“I said don’t let go.” His head snaps towards the guards but they carry on as if they hadn’t heard her only a few feet away. As if-

“They don’t know we’re here. How do you-”

She tugs on his hand. “ _Later_.”

They make it without incident to the structured blocks of the capitol and Fenera drops his hand and the spell. It’s a perfect night with the cobbled streets warm beneath their feet from the now sleeping sun while the air is cooling and cloudless above. Felix has never been out in the city by himself before without an entourage of guards and usually within the Archon’s chariot. He keeps glancing behind expecting to see a platoon of soldiers chasing him down, but there is only soft music and idle chatter following him instead of the heavy thunk of boots or the neighing of war horses. 

After a few blocks he gives up on looking back all together. Fenera too seems to relax the further they venture into the city, steps becoming lighter and her shoulders rolling back, but there’s still a crease between her brows, a frown that clears a path through the crowds. They reach the busier areas near the Parthenus, the grandest theater in all the realm. He’s been there several times for operas and plays, perused the various shops surrounding it, but not this night it seems. She leads them onward, down staircases and across bridges where he has never traveled before.

“Can I know where we’re going yet?” he asks again as they being to descend into parts of the city that he’s heard not too pleasant rumors about. Fenera answers him with silence and his patience ends. Felix stops and it takes a few steps before she realizes he is no longer there to do the same.

“What?”

“Tell me what’s going on or I’m going back.” Her mouth remains closed. He throws up a hand and turns around to return the way they came.

“Wait!” Fenera catches up to him and plants herself in his way, but the words still don’t seem to come easily. 

“What’s wrong?”

“Do you really want to know? You never want to talk about yourself and you’ve never really cared to ask me questions that didn’t involve sword work and positions.”

 _That was before_  he wants to say, but he’s not so sure about that in this moment. “You’re being-”

“What? Childish? You’re not the only one that thinks so. Maybe it’s true then.”  She sighs heavily. “Look, I’m going to pull a page from your book and say I don’t want to talk about it. I want to have fun and I want to have fun with you because I’m sure you need it too. I know I’m shit company right now but just let me have a few drinks first and then I’ll be tolerable, okay?”

“Okay,” he decides. Being in her grumpy company is still better than staring at his ceiling and he can’t deny his own curiosity as to where they’re going. “Lead the way.”

Ten minutes later they reach their destination as Fenera stops them in sight of a low and long building. A faded sign hands above the entrance - a pair of dice with a red snake wrapping around them. “Gambling? You’ve brought me gambling?”

“Does the noble lord protest? Shall I fetch your smelling salts?” The bite in her voice is gone this time, the edge of her smile breaking free. She pulls him over to a darkened area and forces him to face her fully. “There might be an altus or two here, or a few magisters. Someone else might recognize you too and I imagine you don’t want that. Do you mind if I do some cosmetic work? It won’t hurt, I promise.”

“Uh, sure. Go ahead.” 

Fenera lifts her hands to the sides of his head and begins to hum. The sound ripples the Fade around them and seeps into his skin. It doesn’t hurt but it feels strange, like someone is tugging on his hair, his ears. When he feels like he might not be able to take it anymore she takes a step back and the spell stops. “There we are.”

He reaches up to touch his hair and finds it a little thicker than normal, but it’s his ears that surprise him the most. The tops are smooth, rounded, the small tips filed away, and he has a desperate urge to find a mirror. “How, how did you-”

“Ancient Elvhen Weaving that you’re completely not interesting in, remember? I left your eyes the same. They’re too pretty to change.” She pinches one of his cheeks before pulling at the end of her braid and untwisting her hair. Unleashed it falls over her shoulders in gentle waves. It is no spell but she looks completely different to him all the same. “Now, one last thing: Names. I’ll be…Gwen, why not? What about you?”

“Is this really necessary? Felix isn’t exactly a rare name.” He’s sat next to his father and heard _I’ve named my son in your honor_  so many times he feels like there must be hundreds. Still, it might be fun to be someone else for the night. Someone that can do whatever he wants. “Fine. How about Terrowin?”

Fenera scrunches up her nose. “If you’re eight hundred years old.”

“It was my grandfather’s name.”

“Exactly! Okay, Terry. Here.” She hands him a small satchel that clicks and weighs heavy in his palms before looping her arm through his. “Some coin to get you started. Let’s go.”

The inside of the building is warm and loud with voices, music and smoke filling the air. The ceiling sparkles with thousands of tiny mage lights that dance in time with the quick beat and a red snake constantly slithers back and forth in twisting patterns. Dozens of tables that all seem to be full and bursting with extra patrons watching are set about the room where people gamble with dice and cards. No one seems to pay them any mind as they walk through the crowds but still Felix feels nervous, half expecting everyone to turn and bow as they always do. 

“What do you like to play?

“Wicked Grace, I guess.”

“Hm, I think there’s a few tables over here.” She grabs his hand again and leads him forward, but they don’t get too far before running into a waitress with a tray full of candy colored drinks. Fenera pays for two and passes one his way. He sniffs his carefully while she downs hers without a thought and places the empty glass back. “Oh you’re going to be my favorite person tonight, I can tell.”

The woman smiles. “Can I get you anything else?”

“Your name for starters.”

“Aurelia.”

“Mine is Gwen, it’s lovely to meet you. This is Terry. If you could please bring me the best whiskey you have that this will get me,” Fenera passes a few coins into an open palm, “I would greatly appreciate it. Terry?”

He takes a cautionary sip of his current drink and finds the strong sting of alcohol hidden by a sweet apple taste - a recipe for a dangerous night after a few he’s sure. He tips the rest back in one go. “I’m all right for now.”

The waitress leaves and they make their way to a man behind rusting bars to trade their money in for roundels. Felix plays Wicked Grace almost every week in the comfort of Aunt Mae’s parlor and, while their matches can become heated every once in awhile, they have never played for actual coin before. He rolls a few bone chips in his palm, feels the dozens of old marks between his fingers. 

“I have to warn you that I’ve had an excellent teacher,” Fenera says as they make their way back to the tables to wait their turn.

“So have I.”

“Oh? Well, this will be good then. Ah, a spot! Come on.”

They settle in next to one another at an open table just as Aurelia returns with Fenera’s drink. Felix spends most of the beginning trying to remember how to play, as if all that practice at Mae’s has gone flying from his mind, but his added concentration seems to have a good side benefit.

“You have a good poker face. That scowl you love to wear is definitely useful, yeah?” Fenera whispers in his ear, breath warm and whiskey flavored. Her approach is much different- she talks and laughs, distracts with words and smiles and throws her cards down as if she doesn’t have a care in the world. It becomes apparent that she does, however, as the pile of chips continues to grow in front of her.

“Why don’t you take your shirt off next? I’m sure that’ll distract everyone,” he replies and she snorts, choking on a sip of her drink.

“Don’t give me ideas! I’m going to try my luck at one of the tesserae table,” she announces quite suddenly, standing up with a sway.

“You’re leaving? But you’re winning! And you…” He looks around at the table full of unfamiliar faces and feels uneasy again. 

“I said I had an excellent teacher, not that I was always an excellent student.” She touches the tip of his nose and makes a sound. “You’ll be fine. Scream really loudly if anyone tries to make off with you and I’ll be here. Don’t forget to tip when you’re done. Good luck!”

“You in?” the dealer asks him as Felix watches her disappear into the crowd. 

“Yeah.” Chips rattle and cards fly and it takes a few rounds for Felix to forget about his nerves without Fenera at his side, but when he does he finds he enjoys the game even more with the stakes to be had. Betting and raising raises his heartbeat, each quick decision and flip of a card a rush through his veins. 

“Yer doin’ good there,” says one of the patrons after a time. “For someone new.”

“Who says I’m new?”

The old man chuckles. “The cards, lad. The cards.”

“You’ve never been here before?” another asks and Felix shakes his head. “You look quite familiar for some reason. Have you been to Magister Tilius’ soirees before?”

“Uh, no.” He has, a few times, and whether he wanted to or not, but he can’t admit that now. The man that spoke looks at him every once in a while as they continue to play and Felix can see the wheels trying to catch and spin inside their head. He decides its better to cut his losses than continue with this gamble and puts his cards down for good.

When he stands up from the table it takes him a moment to re-orientate himself. He’s not sure how long he has been sitting there for he doesn’t recognize anyone around him from when they walked in and can’t find Fenera after a minute of looking through the thinning expanse of people. His mind leaps to worst case scenarios - that she’s left him behind, that she’s passed out somewhere from Ferelden whiskey, that he’ll have to find his way back to the palace or try to convince a random guard that he is in fact that Archon’s son, rounded ears and all.

He hears her laughter and follows the notes of it to a table across the room. It takes him some time to squeeze through the crowd around it to find her poised at the center of it all. The waitress, Aurelia, stands by her side, hips close together. With the heat building inside the club, Fenera has shrugged out of her coat and scarf and tied her hair back into a low tail that’s tumbling loose, her smile even looser from he can’t even guess what number drink she’s on. The revallas lines on her arms shimmer like the mage lights glistening above when she spots him and he has half a second to wonder why and why the sight sends sparks down his spine before she ruins it. “Felix!”

He tries to duck away from the attention that moves his way. “I thought it was Terry?” Aurelia asks and he’s thankful for her impressive memory.

“Oh, yeah. He looks a little like Felix Pavus though, don’t you think?”

“A little, except for the ears.”

Fenera tilts her head, smirking. “It’s a good thing he’s not. I’m sure Felix isn’t half as fun as Terry here. No gambling clubs for the Archon’s son. Only boring magister’s parties.”

“I heard people got turned into frogs at the last one though,” someone says and they both share a look at that.

“I think it’s time for my last bet,” Fenera says to a chorus of disappointment. “What do you think, _Terry-_  All or nothing for the end?”

He looks down at the sizable amount of chips she’s collected, sees the dealer practically lick their lips in the corner of his gaze. The crowd around them pushes in further, excited. “I think it’s foolish but it sounds just like you, _Gwen_.”

“All right then. All of it on seven except for this,” she picks a few coins from a pile and hands them to Aurelia, “for my lovely assistant of the evening. Would you do the final honors, my lady?”

Aurelia blows across the dice held out in an open hand before it closes and Fenera gives it a ferocious shake. Every eye around the table is latched onto her movements while hers are upon him as she tosses the dice down the table. Everyone goes quiet, breaths held, and then it all rushes out in groans and shouts as the dice roll to a stop with five instead, but she is smiling and he is too. Despite the loss, the night feels far from a defeat.


	9. The Morning Everything Changed, Again

Felix is grateful as the cool, night air hits his face. He breathes it in and exhales the stale, smoky smell that was inside, shrugs his shoulders as if shrugging out of a heavy cloak. The night is truly dark now, the streets clear and walls echoing with only their footsteps. He feels free, freer than he has in a long time even with Fenera a heavy weight against his side pushing him off course with every step.

“Did you have to have that last one?” he asks although he is not free of sin either. They both stayed to partake in a few free drinks in honor of her extravagant fall from riches and the gin warms his blood, puts a glow around the edges of his vision. 

“They dared me,” she answers way too loud. 

“Yes, but-” 

Fenera pushes her nose against the side of his face, one bright eye glaring with utmost urgency. “Dared me.”

“Right, of course. How foolish of me.”

“Yes, fooooolish. Like me. How does it feel to be brought so low? Did you have a good time tonight?” 

Felix feels the sizable purse in his pocket, but it’s more than the coin that makes him smile. “Yes. It was fun, thank you. You’re feeling better now too?”

“Huh? Oh! Yeah, I’m fine,” she replies as they continue walking back towards the palace.

“Can I know what was wrong yet?” 

“I got into a fight with my brother. He’s one of the most stubborn, frustrating people I’ve ever had the misfortune of knowing. The worst decision my parents ever made, and that’s saying something. Aren’t I perfect enough that they could have stopped at one?”

“Perfectly modest, that’s for sure.”

“Quiet, you. I forget what we were arguing about now though.” She laughs. “Mission accomplished!”

They walk for a while in silence contemplating the events of tonight. He’s dreamed of doing this so many times, of sneaking into the city and disappearing from all the duties and titles that plague him most days. It is strange- not royalty himself, but neither can he be a normal citizen. He will never bemoan his station, but he’s spent a lot of time imagining what it might be like to be no one for a time. 

“Want to play the letter game again?” Fenera asks when the palace comes into sight. “What were we on?”

“F, I think. It was your turn.”

She giggles in a way that speaks of mischief and he feels his cheeks burning already as a result. “Have you ever said the word fuck?”

“I-of course!”

“Out loud? With another person around? Say it right now.”

“What? No.”

“I don’t believe you then. Come on. I want to hear the noble Felix Pavus, Lord of something or other I’m sure, son of the Archon of Tevinter, say fuck.”

He says it quietly at first, curled like a question, and then louder, but it is their laughter afterwards that bounces off the walls around them and bubbles up into the stars. Fenera tries to push into him playfully but misses almost all together. He grabs her in time before she ends up plummeting to the ground and somehow manages to keep them both upright in the end too. As he holds her arm the revallas react again, dancing with excited light. There’s no reason to ask why anymore as he drags his fingers down and the lights follow, the magic nipping at him like a hungry, electric fish. It’s for him, because of him.

“Do they always do this?” he asks instead. He can’t recall them reacting during training sessions but they weren’t always visible.

“That question doesn’t begin or end with a G,” she replies.

Eyes roll, but he still plays along. “Got any idea about why they do that?”

“Nice recovery. Sometimes it happens when I’m really angry or happy or…” She frowns, suddenly serious and sour. “Traitors.”

“What?”

When her eyes meet his he can see a storm of thoughts brewing inside, can feel the air hum as she steps closer. “I just, I’m just…Oh shit! I forgot to change you back! Hold still.” 

She places her hands around his head and the tingle of transformation magic washes over him again. It stings a little this time, no doubt due to her inebriated state, but it’s over before he can become too uncomfortable. When finished Fenera touches his face, curling fingers around his jaw. “Much better. You’re very attractive, you know that? I should definitely draw you.”

“I-uh,” he clears his throat, feeling heat on his skin that has nothing to do with her magic. “You draw?”

“I do. Apparently I inherited my father’s art skills, his freckles, and this blasted thing.” She gestures to the small dimple in her chin. “It’s ridiculous.”

“No, it’s…” he reaches for it without thinking and feels a spark of electricity, watches as her mouth parts with a breath of surprise, and some part of him wonders what lightning tastes like. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t ha-”

She catches his hand before it can fall away. “It’s what?”

His mind suddenly goes blanks. “It’s…cute?”

“Cute?” Fenera crinkles her nose and lets his hand go. “I’m all a’quiver.” He tries to explain, to find the right words to say, only to have her snort and tug on his arm. “Let’s go, Ser Terrowin Ladykiller.”

They reach the side gate to the palace with little trouble, but the greatest challenge is still to come. Fenera can’t seem to keep the cloaking spell steady as they weave their way through the gardens and grounds - there’s a moment it drops in the path of a patrol and he just manages to pull her out of sight before they’re spotted. 

When they reach the spot below his window they both take one look at it and shake their heads. Neither of them are in a state for the climb and instead tempt fate by walking through the main doors. It’s growing crowded in the halls as the night moves into early morning and it becomes a challenge to move through without having to stop or catch Fenera’s fumbling steps. The royal wing is in sight, success in their grasp, when she sneezes and the spell erupts into pieces.

A servant squeals, dropping the towels in her arms. “Master Pavus! I oh, forgive me, I didn’t see you there.”

“No it’s my fault.” For a moment they stand there in awkward silence that Fenera quickly fills with amusement. “This is Fe-friend, my friend. She’s going to be staying the night. Could you take her to one of the guest rooms, please?”

“Aw, I can’t stay with you?”

He grabs her arm and hauls her over towards the woman who is looking between them with a gleam of gossip now. “Goodnight.”

“Oh don’t worry,” Fenera says as she loops an arm around her new acquaintance. “I know the way. G’night, Terry!”

Felix manages to make it to his rooms without any further incident and all but collapses into the bed. Despite his sudden exhaustion and conflicted thoughts, he goes to sleep with a smile and a sigh, and more easily than he has in recent days. He dreams of throwing coins to fish while his fathers laugh and rock the boat - two memories swirling together to make something new. He dreams of Fenera too. They’re on an adventure with swords and dragons, and he takes the markings from her skin and wraps them around his own arms so it always feels like they’re touching. 

A persistent bird outside his window wakes him up. He takes his time in rising, stretching and keeping out the light as long as possible. Eventually he opens his eyes and rolls over to find Fenera sprawled across the other half of his bed. It takes a moment to register the sight of her, twisted in his sheets and hair strewn about, before he lets out a surprised shout.

“Ah!” She shoots upwards and half tumbles from the bed. Her cry turns into a sad moan as she gripes her forehead, grimacing. “Why the shouting?”

Felix stands and takes a few steps away. “Why are you in my bed?”

“What?” She looks around with one eye open and realization dawns slower than the sun. “Oh.”

“Why are you in my bed?” he repeats.

“Quit yelling!”

“I’m not yelling!” Fenera grabs a pillow and buries her head beneath it but it does nothing to mute her groans. He takes a breath to steady his rampant heartbeat and feels foolish for reacting so. They’re both clothed and clearly nothing happened - neither of them drank that much, although by the way she’s hiding away it’s obvious Fenera may have had enough. “Stay here, I’ll be right back.”

He returns with a thick, red drink with a piece of long celery branching out from the top. Skepticism is her first reaction but after a few tentative sips it turns to interest as she takes larger gulps. “What is it?”

“My father has perfected a drink for these such occasions. Trust me, it’ll work.” He can’t help it - he laughs at the state of her, at the predicament they’re in, at the thrill from their real adventure still warm in his veins. All of it is ridiculous, but it’s happening nonetheless. 

“What?”

“You’re…really cute in the mornings,” he says, smirking as he turns his bumbling words from before around.

She narrows her eyes at him.  “And you’re a lot less funny in the mornings. Ugh, I really want a bath.”

“You’re welcome to use the royal one. It’s- you know where it is, don’t you?”

“You want me to say no, right?”

“Are you at all familiar with the terms ‘boundaries’ and ‘privacy’?”

“I’ve heard of them in passing.” She downs the final bit of her drink and waves the celery stalk at him. “Care to join me?”

He marks it as progress that his ears only burn a little bit. “Just go. Breakfast in the atrium.”

Felix doesn’t immediately follow her out of the room. Instead he returns to the bed and grabs the amulet on the nightstand. He doubts his father will answer at this hour and is already in some meeting, but he tries to call him in the small chance he will. They’ve spoken almost every night before bed and it’s a miracle Dorian didn’t send the whole Tevinter army to their doorstep when Felix wasn’t on the other end last night. 

His prediction is wrong, however, when the amulet almost immediately heats up in his grasp as if it’s been held tight all day. “Felix!”

“Good morning, Father.”

“Is everything all right?” Dorian doesn’t have to admit to worrying - it’s there in the corner of his voice. 

“I had a late night working with, uh, Gwen.”

The tone to his father’s voice changes instantly. “Oh, is that so? Spurning your old man for more interesting company?”

“Father-”

“No, no, I’m not in the least bit upset. Please, do carry on. Any exciting plans for today that I shouldn’t interrupt?”

“Well we just woke up so I-”

“’We’ woke up?” There’s excitement and a small amount of alarm now, and he realizes his mistake too late.  “Are you suggesting that…Felix, are you-”

“No!” _Maker_ , he wants to throw the necklace across the room. “It’s not, we’re not-it’s nothing. Nothing happened.”

“A pity then.”

“ _Father_.”

“Apologies. I will leave you be, but you do know that you can always tell me anything? Whatever it is, Felix. Always.”

His annoyance disappears at the sudden sincerity and instead he swallows that now familiar taste of guilt. “I know. Are you coming home soon?”

“Yes, most likely within a day or two.”

“Can I know what’s happening finally?”

Dorian gives a long sigh, serious now. “This is a conversation I would have liked to have in person but I’m sure the news will reach Tevinter before I do. I’m surprised it’s not being blared in the streets already. There has…been a motion made to reinstate the Inquisition. Divine Constance has brought us here to voice our opinions on the matter even though it will be her decision in the end. Considering her known allegiances and agendas I imagine it will be approved.”

“Why? What’s happening?”

There’s a pause before the answer comes and Felix feels his heart beating faster without even knowing why. A memory flashes through his mind of another time he waited for his father to explain something unexplainable. It was a morning like this one, the sunlight bright and the birds singing, but every word was a thundercloud, every tear a flood to drown in. That day his world, their world, changed, and even with the Veil sundered and the Fade brushing lovingly against his skin, there was nothing but a void where a family once was. 

It is not unbearable news that Dorian brings this time and yet Felix knows everything will change again. “This new Inquisition’s sole purpose would be to see Keela Lavellan and Fen’Harel brought to justice for their crimes against Thedas.”


	10. Do You Dance, Master Pavus?

Excited fingers tap out a tuneless rhythm upon the table. Felix can’t sit still with all the knowledge and thoughts ricocheting inside in the wake of his father’s revelations. There isn’t much more as Dorian is pulled away by his duties with a promise to discuss it further when he can, but already Felix is buzzing with all the possibilities. For so long the pair of world breakers have been untouchable, protected by her past victories for Thedas and his unrivaled power, and there has been little condolence for those lives they ruined. Even if it wasn’t their ax that split the world and woke sleeping monsters, it would never have happened if not for them. 

His papa would still be alive if it weren’t for them. 

The idea has always been a sharp dagger in his side, this feeling of something spilling into his lungs, but now he feels like he can breathe again with the thought of justice in the air. Part of him wants to fly towards Orlais and join the new Inquisition ranks, to be on the front lines and make them look him in the eyes as their judgement is passed. It is not the happy ending he has always dreamed of, but it will fill some of this hole left in him. It must.

“What are you smiling about?”

Fenera walks into the atrium tousling wet hair, leather outfit traded in for a soft shirt that hangs off a shoulder. “Where did you find that?”

“Huh? Oh, have a stash of stuff here.” She climbs over her chair and has half a slice of toast shoved in her mouth before even sitting down. 

Felix shakes his head. “You’re unbelievable, you know that?”

“Yeah, yeah. Is that more of Dorian Pavus’ special drink? Give it.” She takes a few giant gulps and sits back with a relieved sigh. 

“I’d like to train today. There’s a space inside the palace we can use.”

“Won’t someone talk? Tell him when he gets back?” Felix gives a shrug and she tries to narrow still sluggish eyes. “What’s happened?”

He wonders what she will think of it all, of an Inquisition created to bring to heel two living legends of her people. He knows even not every elf was content with their decision. The discussion is poised on the tip of his tongue but he bites it back. “Nothing, I just…You’re right, it’s time to stop hiding.”

Fenera smiles around her food. “People usually come to see things my way. Don’t know why it takes so long sometimes.”

It might be a fight he doesn’t want to face, at least not right now with this excitement in his veins, but he could start small. “Do you remember the world before the Veil fell?”

“Nope, not born yet. You?”

“Not much. Do you ever think it was the wrong choice? To bring it down?”

“When faced with two awful choices choose the least worst one, yeah? Might have been a better option but probably wasn’t really a lot of time to decide with the Evanuris running around. Besides,” she flaps her arm and the revallas shimmer, “working out for me.”

“It didn’t work out for everyone.”

“I know. It was all stupid and all easily avoidable if _someone_ had taken his head out of his…out the Fade for two seconds. Didn’t your dad help with the spell to bring it down?” she asks and he gives a nod. “But Archon Pavus hasn’t stepped foot in Elvhenan since. I’ve always wondered why.” 

Felix shifts in his seat. “It’s-”

“Let me guess, complicated? Nevermind, my brain is too flooded still to deal with complicated right now. Pass me some more of that drink.”

It is more complicated than he thought. He won’t be able to tell her about the Inquisition without explaining why he wants it so much and it’s a story not many people know, a story he’s never told to anyone before. The world may think Archon Pavus’ coldness towards Elvhenan is from some falling out to do with politics, but there are those that know the truth. Only a select few friends were there when vows and rings were exchanged and Felix has always hated that Keela Lavellan was one of them. She gave her blessing to his parent’s union and its destruction both. 

They finish breakfast and he stops to change into better clothes before heading to his papa’s training studio. There is no dust on the floors or on the range of equipment found inside thanks to constant cleaning, but the room has never been used properly. His eyes immediately find the great sword resting prominent against the far wall and hands itch to touch it, to see his enemy’s reflection in the smooth metal, but he’s not ready. Not yet.

His partner in crime ignores everything in the room besides the one chaise crammed in a corner. An arm flings across her eyes as she plops down upon it. “Okay, have at it.”

“Could you at least call Honor? I’d like to practice with someone.”

“Fine, fine.” She sits up and closes her eyes. Felix feels something pulse through the air, a wave of energy and a wordless tune that pulls at the magic inside. There’s an answering call a second before the air splits and the spirit drifts through into their realm.

“Greetings! Oh dear, are you unwell?”

“I’ll be fine in an hour if everyone stops talking to me. Go help Felix.”

“Of course, I would be thrilled to do so. But first…?” Honor makes a motion with his hand and she groans.

“You-”

“I have a joke.” They both turn to Felix with mouths open in surprise and he clears his throat before forging onward. “How is sex like a game of Wicked Grace? If you have a great hand, you don’t need a partner.”

Fenera lets out a snort and falls back into the cushions, but her eyes are still on him, a little sharper now. “A wondrous offering, Master Pavus,” Honor says. “Shall we begin with a few warm ups?” 

Felix flies through all his drills. He’s never felt such clarity of purpose before, but his sword slashes with ease, clean cuts and controlled parries. Even his shield stays level and catches every one of his Honor’s advances until it is the spirit that gets backed into a corner this time. For once it feels like things are moving forward and not stuck on something passed and he moves with it, this momentum towards something besides languishing grief.

“Well done, Master Pavus!” Honor praises. “Let us spend the rest of our time continuing with a two handed sword.”

It is not an easy thing to go from one weapon to another. While he manages to keep his own against Honor, Felix finds he feels off balance with the heavy blade in his grasp, finds his feet forget to follow patterns that come without thought otherwise. It takes awhile to find the rhythm again and by the end his arms feel weak and body rattling with every hit his opponent made.

“I do believe that is enough for today,” Honor says. “You have vastly improved since our first session together. Out of everything, your footwork could still use more attention.”

“Do you have any suggestions?”

Honor grasps the end of its chin. “Hmm. Do you dance, Master Pavus?” 

“I…guess? If I have to.”

“I suggest you practice different dances more often. It might seem ludicrous, but fighting requires the same mindset, the same coordination. It is sometimes a quick turn or a well placed move that saves a soldier in the end. Shall we try a little now? I think a good foxtrot to start would be most useful.”

Felix feels the tips of his ears burning. “Right now, by myself? I-”

“Oh no, that won’t do.” Honor steps forward but then retreats with a better idea in mind. “Would you mind assisting, Aryon’al Ilu Vistanel?”

Fenera is no longer stretched across the settee. She sits cross legged with a sketch pad in hand and charcoal smeared across her cheek with eyes awake and alert at last. Felix isn’t sure where she got either equipment, or when she even got up to fetch them, but she casts them aside at Honor’s inquiry. As she stands she says something Elvhen in return, something chastising and disgruntled.

“Ir abel- I mean, forgive me,” Honor says and humbly bows its head to Felix. “I still forget you do not speak that tongue.”

“It’s fine.”

“Now, if you wouldn’t mind stepping together…” 

He’s danced the foxtrot what seems like a thousand times, but it feels like the first time as he takes Fenera’s hand and wraps the other around her shoulder. Nerves bundle up inside his chest and they both stand there for a few awkward seconds as he tries to remember how to start.

“Want me to lead?” Fenera asks with a laugh that loosens his worries. He tells himself this is nothing more than sparring in a different way as they finally take the first steps. He stumbles a little bit to begin without the count of music in the air but soon both of them are swirling around the practice room with more ease. “You’re not too bad.”

“I do know some. Elvhen, I mean.” 

“Is that a fact? Hit me with some.”

“There’s aneth era, fenedhis-”

“Everyone always learns how to say hello and how to swear first.”

“Ara seranna-ma, Ma serannas.” Despite the bubble in his throat he pulls her a little closer, embolden by the events of today and the smirk on her lips. “Vhenan.”

It is Fenera’s turn to stumble, just a small misstep, and it is more the blush that spreads beneath her freckles that gives her away. “Easy stuff,” she says after a turn. “I’ll have to teach you the better things.”

“Insults?”

“Of course.” She leans in a little further than necessary, cheek brushing his briefly. “I like amatus better too.” 

The endearment always pricks at his heart, burns with its premature disuse for his parents, but for the first time he thinks it’s not a name only belonging to one person, a title that must be kept sacred. Maybe, one day, it could pass through his mouth too. 

“I like other types of dances better too.” She stops them on their makeshift floor and sways her hips in a way that makes him a little dizzy. “Would you be interested in learning them?”

He doesn’t trust his voice at first and simply nods. “For training purposes.”

“Of course.” Fenera shifts her hip into his and he can’t help but tighten his grip on her hand. “Are you up for another adventure tonight? I know a place we can go to practice. Wear something nice, but light. It’s going to be hot where we’re going.”

“Not another seedy underground?”

“Rude. I’ll have you know The Red Viper is a completely legitimate and respected business. Only the nicest places for Prince Pavus.”

“How considerate.”

They stare at each other for a moment before a throat clears across the room. Honor stands there with a speculative, sneaking look on its face. Felix all but jumps away from Fenera and with steadfast dedication keeps his eyes averted from the spirit and her too, just in case. He hears amusement in her voice when she speaks next.

“I’ll come get you at midnight. Come on, Honor. Let’s be off. Oh, I have good joke to give you too. What’s the difference between anal and oral sex? Oral sex makes your day. Anal makes your hole weak!”

Felix doesn’t understand the Elvhen that spills from Honor’s mouth this time either, but he can decipher the scandalized, thinly outraged tone of it well enough. Even as his own face heats, he lets out a few clips of laughter himself and watches them leave the room from the corner of his gaze. With them gone he quickly moves to set the room straight but pauses when he re-discovers Fenera’s sketch pad thrown across cushions. When he flips it over the subject scratched in coal is easy enough to recognize but it still takes him by surprise. It’s his own face, the details around the edges muted and soft as she seems to have paid close attention to his eyes. Something tickles against the inside of his ribs, a fluttering feeling that coaxes a smile out of him. The grin lasts as he tucks the pad beneath his arm and leaves the room to prepare for whatever comes next.   


	11. The Sea Glass Stairs

Felix fiddles with the collar of his tunic as he all but paces a divot into the tiled floor of his bedroom. He stops in front of the mirror even if he’s done it a dozen times already to check on his chosen attire for the evening. The sleeveless tunic reaches down to his thighs, sapphire in color with heavy, golden embroidery weaving and spiraling out along the center lines in intricate patterns, with loose trousers to match. It’s not his most formal attire by any stretch, and he thought of wearing something even more bedazzled at first, but he should have asked Fenera to elaborate on their destination before she disappeared to calm his jittery nerves.

“This is ridiculous,” he mutters to himself as he stops himself from smoothing back his hair for what must be the hundredth time. It’s only Fenera. They’ve both looked at each other drenched in sweat and covered in bruises before, hairy tousled and coming undone to stick out at odd ends. This isn’t the first time they’ve snuck from the palace either and he shouldn’t expect anything but the same - a night of fun and festivities, and likely flowing drinks if she has any say again.

But…it’s also _Fenera_. 

Things don’t seem to be the same as they once were. He’s not sure when it happened, or what is happening, but everything seems on the cusp of change now. When he thinks of her it’s not with a sigh and a roll of his eyes anymore but with a warmth that spreads through his chest, a feeling like the moment before you leap from the edge of a cliff into the waters below. For more than a month he has always been looking forward to his training. Now he looks forward to seeing her again. Somewhere, somewhere very far in the back of his mind now, lesson twenty-nine tries to shout and flail for his attention, but he doesn’t care. He…he…

There’s a quiet knock at the door leading to his study and he knows who beckons him. With one final fix to his appearance he takes a breath and crosses the room to join her. “You’re late. I was-”

Fenera stands in torch and moonlight gazing out into the gardens below. He finally has a full view of the revallas design on her back as the dress she wears is open save for a few straps holding it all together. In the center a wolf’s face shimmers at him, eyes unblinking, as more lines curl and dip further down beneath the gleaming, white fabric. As she turns he can see every curve along her waist and hip as the dress’ cinched design exposes her skin there, her leg as it peeks through the long sit down the center of the folded skirt, and it is not the jewels and gold collected around her neck or waist that has him dazzled. 

“You look quite handsome,” she says as she approaches, each sway of those hips like a hammer strike to his heart. Her hair is in a loose braids this time with golden jewelry woven across her crown, and a strange desire to run his hands through it flits through his mind, to be close enough to drown in the sweet scent of her perfume.

Fenera reaches out with a laugh barely contained and taps his jaw closed. “I-You look…”

“Let me guess, cute?”

“No. You look- you look amazing, Fenera.” Heat rushes up his cheeks, but he’s pleased to see a blush beneath her freckles too.

“Thank you, Felix. Ready to go?”

Her cloaking spell wraps around them again but this time when they leave the palace grounds they head towards the city center where a large eluvian glows like starlight in the night. The Crossroads is quiet with only guards and a few wandering souls like them flitting between thrumming portals. The elves in armor ask questions Felix can’t understand, nor does he quite understand the looks on their faces when Fenera makes her replies. They seem shocked, cowed, but he doesn’t linger on it and doesn’t ask where they’re going. He only holds onto her hand and sneaks glances that are caught more often than not. 

“Here we are.” She stops them in front of a golden eluvian with braided frame, a plaque of water flowing through a half opened gate and seven coins spread above at its peak. 

“Antiva City?”

“I’m guessing you’ve never been to a street festival before. Not exactly a proper place for a Tevinter prince, but they’re a lot of fun.”

He bumps her shoulder. “I trust you.”

“A terrible mistake.” She tugs on his hand and leads him through glistening glass. 

He can tell it is a different world they emerge into without having to open his eyes. The air smells of salt instead of the rose covered walkways of his city, the cool breeze from the shore sending prickles across his exposed skin, and he thinks she might have been wrong about the weather. The eluvian sits outside of Antiva City itself along the main road and they pass over a long bridge with the ocean below that leads to the great portcullis sung about in the history books. It’s shut now at this hour save for a small door that they walk through after passing a few words and coins to awaiting soldiers. The city is quiet until they drift down towards the docks and then there is the quick beat of drums bouncing off stone walls, the smell of things savory and sweet curling beneath their noses. 

“No transformation spell this time?”

“You won’t need it.” The sparse streets grow more crowded and as they turn a corner it is an ocean of faces that they find instead of foam covered waves, a thunder of voices and music that drowns out all thought for a moment. It’s too difficult to sift through individuals in the blurs of motion their bodies make, the noises too mixed together to pull out anything familiar. He’s used to being a center of attention at festivals and parties, but here everyone is no one without the aid of masks and the realization unravels the knot of his shoulders a bit.

Fenera guides him through dancers that laugh and sing and dangerously gesture with open drinks. When she pushes one into his hand he doesn’t question it and throws the burning liquid down in hopes it will lessen his nerves. The people around him aren’t really his concern - it’s her, the way she looks and the way she keeps looking at him, purposefully and expectant all at the same time. For a while they stand at the margins watching the everyone sway as liquor loosens limbs and lips. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme to anything, several sections moving to different dances or simply couples moving close together, and yet there is no discord to be found. He’s not familiar with most of the styles but the beat is something easily felt, a rhythm that jumps down his body and makes his feet keep count even as he thinks he’ll never be able to keep up. 

When he’s finished with his drink Fenera picks the empty glass from him and places it on a table behind them. She gives a dramatic curtsy before asking, “do you dance, Master Pavus?”

“Only with you.” He’s proud of the way she gives a quick glance down with a smile like the start of something more.

“Sweet talker,” she says while wrapping arms around his neck. “I’m guessing you don’t know the steps?”

“No, but I have a pretty good teacher.”

“And you seem to be a fast learner.” She moves quickly, legs weaving over one of his and turning her so they end up flush against one another. Hips roll back into him and he can feel her smirk against his burning cheek. “Let’s see if you can keep up.”

They start slow, a motion here and there, a turn and pivot, fingers clasping and reaching. As he predicated Felix gets his feet twisted with all the quick movement to begin, but Honor was right - fighting and dancing are similar, and he begins to forget about counting and memorizing and just moves, reacts to the way his partner attacks on this battlefield. There is no steel between them now, only smiles and laughter and a thin barrier breaking every time he feels her heart beating against his, with every brush of his hands down the bare length of her back. 

He begins to understand the suggestion of attire as the night continues on. It’s warm with the press of bodies around them, warmer still as they add their own heat with every sway and step. Sweat begins to collect and roll down beneath his clothes, makes her skin slick to the touch, but he doesn’t mind the excuse to hold her harder as a result. Everything else is fading away, the music, the dancers, the dance itself. There’s only the two of them and the narrowed spaces between, the way they coil around one another that he knows would raise eyebrows and scandalized whispers at home, but he doesn’t care. He only cares about how her every breath across his lips makes him feel unsteady and lost but real and here all at the same time.

“Felix?” He hasn’t realized they’ve stopped moving until she whispers his name, finally notices that his fingers are buried deep into her hair, but he doesn’t pull away. Not with her own hands grasping tight to his tunic or the way her eyes seem like they’re on fire, and he thinks, he knows, that he wants a taste of that heat upon his tongue. 

“I-”

“Felix,” she says it with more force this time and when she pulls away it feels like cold water rushing over his head. “I…let’s get out of here? I need some fresh air.”

“Okay,” he replies to her already turned back and tries to keep up with her fast feet. As they emerge from the revelers he takes deep breaths, each one sweeter the further she leads him in a new direction from the way they came. Her progression slows when they can barely hear the music again and it reminds him of her storming anger the other night, although it’s not rage that seems to make her agitated now. There was a flash of something before she let go, of fear or hesitation, he isn’t sure, for neither are something he’s used to seeing there.

“How did I do?” 

His sudden question makes her jump. “What?”

“With dancing, I mean.”

“Oh. You did good. Maybe too good.” The last is muttered too quietly for him to hear.

“I can’t decide if my father would be proud or angry with me if he ever found out what I’ve been doing tonight.”

The idea replaces her usual grin. “I’m sure Double D would be able to pull off both with ease.”

“Double D?”

“Yeah, Daddy Dorian.”

“Please no.”

“Too bad it’s already a thing!”

He can’t hold his irritated expression for too long as her laughter pulls some from his own throat. “Are we going to another festival?”

“No. I want to show you the stairs. You haven’t seen them already have you? The ones made of glass?” He shakes his head. “Good! Come on.”

They walk until the sound of surging water is the loudest thing to be heard. As they approach the ocean he thinks he can see where they’re headed as something glows down towards the beach. It is indeed a staircase lit not by torches but something else, something that appears to be part of the stairs themselves. “What is this?”

“It’s all made of sea glass,” she explains and as they finally reach the landmark he can see each individual pebble cemented together, reds and blue and greens and a handful of other colors. Felix reaches out to run finger across their smooth surfaces and watches as the white light beneath reacts, moving like ripples over water, and changes into an explosion of different colors. Fenera takes a few steps ahead of him and the same thing happens beneath her sandals. “Some guy spent something like fifteen years collecting it all and his partner cast the enchantment inside. Nobody really knows how it’s stayed for so long.”

She hops down further, both arms flung out to touch the sides, and colors flash excitedly in her wake. He follows, waving his hand up and down to create rainbows of his own until they’ve reached the last step and the sand beyond. Looking back the way they came, Felix watches the echoes of their actions fade slowly until only that calm, white light remains.

“It’s incredible. Perhaps a slow release spell? Or they could have siphoned magic from the Veil nearby and with it gone the enchantment would be constant unless interrupted. Does it turn off at any point during the day, or has it ever? I wonder if-” Fenera lets out a snort that grabs his attention. “What?”

“I bring you to maybe the most romantic part of the city, where we are _alone_ , and you all you want to do is talk about magical theories. You are ridiculous. I thought…well.” She slumps back against the stair wall behind her and sends happy bursts of light outwards even as her arms cross. “We should probably get back soon.”

Yet neither of them move at first. A moment, _the_  moment hovers there between them, and they both know it must be him to grab it. The beginning for something new, something even more dangerous than secret sparring partners, but despite all logic he wants to take this chance too. Or maybe this, maybe she, is the most logical thing of all, because it seems illogical not to want to reach for her electrified skin, not to chase after the promise in her gaze. He just needs a way to breach the last of the barrier between them, to ask-

“I want to play the game,” he announces quite suddenly and watches her turn, suspicious, and a little disappointed.

“Maybe we should just-”

He takes a step closer. “Trust me?”

“Fine. We’re on-”

“I know. Let me go first?”

Fenera gives a sigh as she looks out over the dark blanket of the ocean. “Go ahead then.”

When he’s near enough he reaches out to turn her face towards him again and feels her breath flutter against his skin fast like his heartbeat. “May I kiss you? I mean-can I, may I give you a kiss?”

“You-” The smile that grows across her face is both amused and impressed before it blooms into something hungry. “Yes.”

Her lips are cool against his with a sharp edge of mana that seems to curl beneath his skin. Felix doesn’t know the rhythm of this either, can feel his nerves bunching up into a thunderstorm, but he takes the first steps anyways. Noses bump in his eagerness, mouths fumbling to change the angle, and it’s laughter that starts to slip through the cracks between them.

He pulls away with a groan. “Wait, wait. Can I try again?”

“It’s my turn for a questi-umf!” 

He’s careful now, a slow discovery of how it is to drag her lip between his, or how his head gets a little fuzzy when she sighs sweetly, how the world seems to tip as her tongue brushes his. The heat of the crowd is nothing like what surges up and down his spine at the taste of wine in her mouth and the way her fingers tug in his hair, and inside his head the world seems to explode in brighter colors than the magic of the stairs could ever create.

They’re a tangle of limbs and cloth when they part, but he doesn’t get too far before she chases after another kiss with amusement that’s deeper and more breathless this time. “You are a fast learner, Felix Pavus.”

It takes a much longer time to return to the palace. Their journey is waylaid as they stop to kiss in shadowed alcoves, over banisters or against darkened eluvians. He feels drunk, light with something he never thought could or would matter, something he thought he didn’t want, and even if it’s all a cliche he doesn’t care. As they walk hand in hand through the main gates of the archon’s palace under the surprised, watchful gaze of guards, he doesn’t care about this either. Fenera looks at him with pride, a smug grin on her face as she salutes those they walk by. Let the word spread, let his father know. For once the world feels right again and he’s not going to pretend anymore.

It is when they near his chambers that the momentum of the night starts to wear away and his mind falls from the hazy cloud. Steps beyond is the thought of something he has given so little thought to at all. He’s not sure how to ask this question, doesn’t even know what foot to begin the possibility of this dance with. His hesitation must show for Fenera stops them short with a gentle tug.

“Felix, I…I think I’ll take a bath. The royal ones are becoming a favorite place of mine and I’m feeling sticky and gross after all that dancing tonight.” The same mischief from this morning is there in her expression, but so much more too. “Care to join me?”

And there’s more in the question where once it was only in jest. He could laugh and roll his eyes like before, sleep and return to the world belonging to the Archon’s son, but he doesn’t want that anymore. He wants to go forward, no matter where it leads. Felix takes a step forward and holds out his arm this time. “Shall we?”

art by trashwarden <3


	12. A Lesson Not to be Forgotten(nsfw)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is nsfw but can be skipped without missing anything plot wise!

The sound of falling water surges into his ears as they enter the royal bathhouse. Dorian spared little expense in its renovations with glistening tiles blooming up the arching pillars that are cast in shadows and muted mage lights, some that are sunk beneath the clear water and change colors slowly. A constant waterfall pours from an outcropping to one side with a luxurious retreat hidden beneath of soft seats and the scented smoke of a hookah to enjoy. Felix doesn’t spend as much time as his father does in this place but he’s finding it’s now one of his favorite places as Fenera lets go of his hand to pull loose the straps holding her dress.

Steam curls against his cheeks but he knows it’s the way the ivory fabric flows down her skin that heats him from the tips of his ears down to his toes. Years of propriety urge him to glance away, but he’s not sure he can move at all even if he wanted. Fenera glances over her shoulder, giving him a wink, before she steps out of the puddle of her dress and into the bath. The golden jewelry around her wrists and woven into her hair goes flying as she drifts in further, her easy laughter joining the sound of them dropping to the shallow depths without a care to their worth. She sinks down to her shoulders before turning around to face him again and his mind is racing too much to figure out if he’s disappointed or relieved.

“Well?” Her voice echoes off the thick walls. “Are you going to join me?”

“I…uh-”

“Oh fine. I’ll turn around if it makes you feel better. Honestly.”

Water sloshes as she moves and places her arms on the ledge behind her. The wolf of her revallas watches him and he takes a long breath beneath its stare before reaching for the first clasp of his tunic. He works quickly, nerves making him pause at the task of pushing down his smalls, however. He expects his father and Aunt Mae and half the magisterium to show up when he does, but no one pops out of the alcoves nor does Fenera turn around until he lets out of a quiet cough when he’s more than waist deep. He follows her motions as she reaches for soap and begins to lather her arms and neck, but turns to the side when her hand dips lower. It is silent around them save for the sound of lazy waves and the loud blaring of his heart in his ears.

“Felix, fuck, I’m not going to bite you! I mean if you’re really uncomfortable I’ll leave? I thought-”

“No! I just...I don’t-” He swallows his pride. “I’ve never done anything like this or...anything.”

He sees her still from the corner of his gaze. “Anything?” A nod is the only thing he can muster in answer. “Oh well, I...it can just be a bath then, Felix. Or nothing at all. Whatever you want.”

He wants this, wants more, and it burns like an ache when straining for something out of grasp, but she is not out of reach and he has finally decided to start having things for himself. To be himself, not the person that sits still in his father’s fears or his papa’s shadow.

“Well, not whatever you want,” she continues, her voice turning sly. “Start with the usually stuff before I start hanging you from the ceiling, I think.”

His nerves rattle loose as he laughs and swivels back to face her. There is expectation in the way she looks at him - not the kind that only demands he gives but something that holds promise too, to give and take instead, and he finds he wants that possibility more than anything else. Well, perhaps not more than anything with the way the lights shimmer over her skin and make promises to what is hidden beneath the surface. He wants something a bit more tangible right now.

A steadying breath, and then- “I want you to come here.”

He can’t be sure it’s the humidity in the room or the way beads of water run down her skin that makes him lightheaded as she rises and steps towards him. Eyes follow the lines of her revallas, how they dip between breasts and curl around hips. His mouth goes dry at the sight of soft curves and everything in between and for a moment his thoughts scatter again. “You have your...” He gestures to his own chest.

Her fingers graze over the metal bar pierced through her nipple and there’s a sudden wash of dizziness as his blood rushes fast. “Don’t like them?”

“Yes! I mean, Maker…”

“No, just you and me. Come here already.” A yank on his hand and she pulls him from shelter and into the open. It is more than the cool air that prickles his skin as her gaze washes over him quickly, as smiling lips catch between teeth. Water sloshes against his thighs as she takes a step closer. “And now what do you want? Do you want to touch me?”

 

“Yes.” He reaches for her arm, skin he has touched countless times already, but it feels completely different now. The revallas follow him again, brightening as he crosses across her collar and down further near her heart while the other hand follows a line wrapping around her hip and feels her quiver a bit at his tickling touch. He holds a breath as he caresses the plush warmth of her chest and follows the path her fingers took as they touch the cool metal through her flesh.

“Ow!” He pulls away quickly, an apology perched on his tongue, until he hears her laughter echoing. Fenera sticks her tongue out. “Sorry, couldn’t resist.”

He sighs, scooping up some water to give her a splash. “Do you have to torture me?”

“Oh Felix.” She grabs his hands and places them upon her again, squeezing so his fingers dig in further than before. With another step there is little space between them, hot and electric skin connecting to spark at the base of his spine. “I haven’t even started.”

A kiss follows, deepening with every shallow breath, and his reserves melt away with every wordless want she presses onto his tongue. He explores her with the exuberance of youth, fingers deep in her hair and dipping low to follow lines only imagined before, and he can’t decide if he wants to keep his eyes open to see it all or to drown in the darkness of feeling that flares with colors every time she moves against him. A gentle tug on his hair and he tastes her smile as he can’t help but let out a noise in response, but he fights back with his own fingers skating down her side to make her shiver.

The next tug is harder, forcing him to break away and watch as she kisses his fingertips, to watch as she drags his hand down between her breasts and further still. His thumb follows the narrow strip of hair between her legs before brushing against softer skin and he can’t help but hold his breath until there are galaxies swimming about her star shine eyes. “Touch me, Felix,” she says, a command edged with need, as she guides fingers inside. He marvels at the feel of her, cautious at first, unsure, but she encourages him with every sigh and smile and every bite of nails into his arm that tell him to keep going when he moves just right. There is laughter when the angles are all wrong, but it is never unkind, only a merriment drunk on inexperienced thirst. His mind works, cataloging and testing, even though his heart races and wants to rush and burn and feel everything all at once.

All thoughts break like shattered glass, however, when her hand wraps around his length. It’s warm and smooth, impossibly smooth, filled with the soft hum of her mana that vibrates straight through him. He is no stranger to this, but everything is different with another’s touch, each sensation new and unexpected. She drags fingers up and down slowly, squeezing and twisting, and he can’t concentrate on anything but this tightness growing towards breaking. A spike of pleasure rushes through him that shakes his nerves and rattles his breath. It’s too much, the pressure of her hand, the sting of her nails into his hip, the way her golden eyes gleam, and he can’t-

“Fen, wait.” She listens, touch going still and slack, as he tries to catch his breath and pounding heart. “Wait.”

“I’m waiting,” she says while peppering his jaw with quick, easy kisses. Lips continue down, holding longer and harder, and it’s difficult to get his pulse to settle when she tries to bring it to the surface.

“You’re not helping.” He says it even as his own hands betray him by pulling her to him again.

Fenera grabs hold of his hand and kisses the palm. “What do you want, Felix Pavus?”

He doesn’t, can’t, answer right away, as he looks at her through mage lights and some new magic. Sometime ago the tie holding her hair came undone to spill it loose and he shifts his hand through soft darkness before a thumb traces designs from the freckles on her cheek and brushes across her wet mouth. Teeth take the opportunity to nip at fingertips, teasing and yet comforting, with bolts of electricity that ground him to this moment. She is so close and still not close enough anymore, and it’s a strange new yearning inside him that craves after this feeling of together when he has spent so much time apart.

In one swift motion he hefts her up around his waist, listens to her surprised and delighted laughter as he carries her through the break in the waterfall and up the incline towards the seated area, and they are both bursting with amusement by the time he sets her down again. “You,” he finally reveals, capturing her face in his hands and making her be the one to moan with a kiss that curls everything into a thrumming knot. “I want you.”

“Good,” she says and pushes him back so he falls into the bench behind with a dull thud. She follows, straddling his hips and rolling her body up against his in a slow, agonizing motion. “I want you too.”

There is no space for thinking between them now, no grasp of time slipping by too slow and fast all at once. There is her touch firm upon his chest, tongue pressing to his own as he digs blunt nails into her thighs and back, scrambling for any purchase when she slides her slick heat against him in quick strokes until he is hard with sighs escaping his mouth as constantly as the water falling down above them. He says her name like it might save him and she is merciful then, catching his cock and sinking down upon it. He watches every inch disappear inside her and no flame or strike of match can compare to this warmth that takes hold of him and ignites every nerve up his spine.

His fingers hold on tighter but he can’t help it, not with the way she feels, not with the way she looks with cheeks blushed and eyes heavy with pleasure, but there is no holding on when Fenera begins to move. Slow at first then faster, harder, hands coming up to brace atop his shoulders, and everything he ever imagined on dark nights never compared to this. It’s all too fast, too much, but he doesn’t want it to stop. He knows he will not last for much longer as electricity jolts through him that builds and builds to something that can do nothing but topple over. When she bends down to kiss him he feels swallowed whole and doesn’t care if there will be nothing left of him after.

“Fen, I-” Everything tightens, trapping thought and breath, but she understands well enough. A protest is poised on his tongue as she swiftly dismounts and his release teeters on the precipice, but she is not through with him just yet. With her eyes watching, lips wrap around him with a different type of heat that boils his body to a fever pitch. It is his turn to grip at her shoulders when her cheeks hollow out and pull him over into oblivion. He thinks he might cry her name, obscene things spilling forth as he does, but he can’t hear anything over this immense rush of release flooding through him.

When he resurfaces Fenera is atop his lap again, fingers curling through his thick hair as a smug smile curls her mouth. “Everything you dreamed?” He wants to say something smart in response, but words are a messy puddle in his mouth, and his lack of quick response only makes her grin grow. “I’ll take that as a yes, job well done.”

Laughter is an easier thing to produce in the aftermath of bliss and he clings to it like he does to her, bringing them close so their foreheads touch, and finds stillness again in every breath they share. Fingers brush up and down his arms, across his chest, light touches that ease him down. There is a softness to her eyes now and it’s the beginnings of a different ache to see affection tracing desire from her - one neither of them seems ready to face as her look changes when she catches him noticing. “You know, I’m enjoying the benefits of your training too. I wonder if you have that warrior stamina yet? Tired?”

“No,” he says as want starts to bleed over contentment again, and he can’t imagine how anyone could grow tired of any of this.

“Good because,” she pauses, tugging him to the side of the bench to settle atop her now and grabbing his hand to place between her legs once more, “this lesson isn’t over yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  art by [needapotion](http://needapotion.tumblr.com/)  
> 


	13. The Blood that Binds Us

_20 years earlier..._

 

He tries again even though they both know it’s futile. The enchanted wood doesn’t give way beneath his shoulder or boot no matter what force he puts behind each assault. There is only the one door and one window, open and wide without any bars, but it is no easy exit. June’s fortress is far underground and their view is a river of lava surging below. He thinks he could maybe climb the chimney, thinks he can see a patch of light somewhere up there, but he can’t leave. He can’t leave her behind.

They’ve chained Keela to the middle of the floor with some metal he’s never seen before. Copper colored veins strike through it shimmering every time she moves, which is more often than he wishes. The skin of her neck and wrist is red beneath the cuffs around it and every motion seems to rub raw, but she won’t settle, raging and struggling against this constant pain as maddening as an itch that won’t go away. _Asca’elgar_ , she called it, the knowledge drudged up from the Well of Sorrows, but there is no known way to escape this drain on her body and magic. A cruel cage made by cruel gods. Vaxus and Keela are both trapped and the _trap_ , one he suspect Solas is going to walk into willingly. It’s what he would do for the people he loves too.

She lets out one last long, angry string of curses in too many languages before slumping down to the cold floor, arm trembling with every quick inhale. The other is made useless, the prosthetic gone silent as the chains choke all magic from her. It is strange to see it hang so lifeless when he has witnessed it burn a god to cinders, alarming when he knows the spell to save them all is locked inside it and now maybe lost forever. 

“Vaxus?” she calls when the echoes of her outburst finally fade.

He crouches down beside her. “What is it?”

“Is there water?”

“Ah, no. There’s nothing.”

“I am going to make them suffer for this,” she swears and he has no reason to doubt her, not after everything, but doubt is a barb in his heart put there by worry and guilt and the weight of responsibility when before he had only himself to consider. He thinks of Dorian and Felix and a promise he intends to keep as he sits and encourages Keela to rest against his side. The walls are thick and their plans tattering at the edges, but he can’t give up hope that he’ll see them again. He can’t let her give up hope either.

“When this is over I think we’ll go to the Hinterlands. There was that one little lake atop the hill, do you remember? I think Felix would like it. He’ll try to catch frogs while Dorian reads and I’ll just be happy to lay there and look at the clouds. It would be nice to lay down for awhile. What about you?”

Vax takes a deep inhale, imagining the air isn’t stale and burning but softer and flower filled. Keela doesn’t answer, doesn’t make any sound, but he can tell something is wrong by the way she has stiffened against him. He looks down in time to see the glint of tears before her hand wipes evidence of them away. The sight worries him more than the heavy locks across the doors. “Keela?”

“I am sorry Vaxus, that I took you away from them.”

“Hey.” He turns to face her more, catching her hand and giving a gentle squeeze. “You didn’t force me to come. I chose it. I want to be with them, but I want to protect them too anyway I can. You’d do the same for your family.”

She laughs but it is without mirth. “Would I?”

“What do you mean?”

“I-” It has been a long time since he’s seen her so unraveled. “I’m pregnant. I found out before we left. I have not told him, not when the outcome is so unknown, and I-” Keela pulls her hand out of his and glances away. “I cannot fail, no matter the cost. After all this, I don’t even know if...”

The silence between them is stunned now. His first response is something joyous but stark reality crushes the words in his throat. “I’m sorry,” he says with no alternative in mind.

“So,” she pauses, wiping away the last remnant of tears, and eyes turn hard once more, “I will make them pay. I will see this to the end.”

“I know.” There can be no room for doubt anymore, he realizes, no half measures when the fate of the world is at stake, and if there has been one leader who has proven time and time again to be worthy of his loyalty it is her. Yet it is not a soldier that wraps an arm around her shoulder for a comforting embrace, but a friend, and he thinks she might need that more.

The quiet between them is broken by the sound of something strange, soft like the sound of book pages being tossed in the wind. Vaxus turns to the window that isn’t a window as the sound grows louder. He looks for something to defend them with but there is nothing in the room save for chains and mold over stones. It is not a god or a guardian that appears, however, but a raven and yet no ordinary one. As it flies towards them a cloud of purple dust and lightning swallows it whole and in its place a woman appears.

Relief rushes through him. “Morrigan!”

“I am glad to have found you both mostly intact. Here, I possess the key to unlocking this vile torment.” Together they work to free Keela from her binds, Morrigan snapping the locks free while Vaxus carefully removes the chains from weeping flesh. When the last falls away Keela’s magic rushes in fast, pushing them back a step as fire all but engulfs her. After a few breaths is diminishes, but he can still feel it like heat radiating.

“Now what? No offense, but we can’t all turn into birds.”

A moment later the sound of the door unlocking freezes him in place with battle plans and exit strategies forming quick in his mind. He crouches into a fighting position only to feel Morrigan’s hand on his shoulder. “There is no need.”

As the door swings open another familiar face greets them, an elf with swirling lines of Dirthamen and sharp daggers in each hand. Vaxus remembers their first meeting, when he dangled the agent of Fen’Harel off a ledge as Keela battered him with questions, but those days are long since passed. “Good to see you too, Taliesin. Thank you.”

“Do not thank me just yet.  You are likely safer in here.”

“I will meet you aloft. Make haste, lest our element of surprise be lost,” Morrigan says before magic takes hold and gives her raven’s wings again. She returns the way she came, a quiet caw echoing in farewell.

“Your things are here.”  Once they are free of the cell, Taliesin points to an open chest against the wall. Armor and weapons quickly find their places once more and Vax feels easier with his hands wrapped around the hilt of his greatsword.

“Guards?”

“Yours will be no trouble,” Taliesin says as they round the corner and find two bodies slumped into an alcove. “There may be others, but let us hope they are otherwise distracted by Fen’Harel. The fortress is our true enemy. I have disabled a few traps on my way inside, but I fear there are many more. June is clever, and has had many more years to place them than I have had minutes to disarm. Go where I go. Unless you see me fall into a pit or skewered, of course.”

“Wonderful.”

Before they travel any further, Taliesin drops his hand on Keela’s arm. “Are you all right, lethallan?”

She catches Vax’s gaze briefly. “Yes.”

“The spell is intact?”

The metal fingers of her prosthetic flex, runes flashes on the underside of the arm like lightning strikes. “It is ready.”

“Good. Let’s finish this then, shall we?”

They continue on silence, climbing stairs and crossing bridges with darkness or boiling rivers below. Taliesin’s words prove true as they only come across one patrol but several traps that must be solved or disabled. It does not help that the fortress seems to be alive, pieces and rooms moving to some unknown music, and they are thankful for the rogue’s sense of direction.

“There.” He points down the last hallway to where sunlight cuts lines across the stone. “The way out.”

Taliesin explains their plans as they walk forward, of what will await when they step out into the light again. It’ll be another relief to see the sun again after so long in the dark, but there are far from being out of the woods. Their capture changed much, but the goal is still the same. Today gods and old magic will fall or they will fail and the world will know true chaos. Vax imagines utter darkness covering Thedas, the heavy blanket of it surging over Minrathous and his home, his family, and grips tighter to his sword.

“I think-” The thought is broken up as the ground trembles like a great explosion has ignited beneath them. Vax stumbles into the nearest wall as mortar and weeds rain down to tickle his nose, but the hallway holds and settles after a few heart straining moments. Taliesin brushes rubble from his hair. “That should not have happened yet. We need to hurry, there isn’t much time.”

“Where are we-” As Keela steps forward something clicks beneath her heel, a quiet sound that each knows spells imminent disaster in this dangerous labyrinth. Vax doesn’t think. He lets his sword drop from fingers and rushes forward to push her out of the way just as a cage of magical energy springs up where she once stood – where he now stands.

“Vaxus!” Keela pounds against the solid cage, clear like glass but something stronger. “Taliesin, can you disarm it?”

The elf scurries to the task, nimble fingers feeling for latches or holes along with the walls and floors. There is another grating sound as stone moves and yellow gas slowly begins to seep up from the floor. It tickles Vax’s nose as it rises, makes him cough as more and more fills the small area. As Taliesin attempts to find the catch, Keela unsheathes her sword and swings hard. The metal cracks against the barrier, bouncing back with a viciousness he can see as she grimaces and lets out a pained groan.

“Taliesin!”

“There is no release. It is magic in nature, likely with a keyword.”

“Can you discern it?”

“Even if I could…” Taliesin stops but the look on his face speaks about what he does not want to finish. Even if he could, it would be too late. The poison blurs things at the edges now to make Vaxus feel like he’s on the deck of a sea tossed ship, but he can see the stubbornness flash across Keela’s face well enough.

“No.” She places her false hand to the prison between them. The palm begins to glow, thrumming with a power he can hear and feel. The walls buckle but do not break and she doesn’t give in either, shaking her head and trying harder with magic burning white this time. Vaxus doesn’t see the outcome of this attempt as his vision blackens and weakness brings him to his knees. It is getting harder to pull air into his lungs and even when he manages it burns.

Taliesin says something - he’s not sure if it’s in Elvhen or Antivan or Common, but it doesn’t seem to matter for it’s all a garble in his head. “No!” Keela replies, bending down until Vax can see her eyes again. The ground rocks again, but he can’t tell if it’s another explosion or death quaking through his veins.  

“Keela, we can’t-”

“Me deixa em paz! Vaxus.” She reaches out again, hand turning a red that burns purple at the margins, a power he knows is meant for other things than breaking these prison bars. It is a power not meant for him but for setting the world free. “I will not leave you to this.”

“Go.” It isn’t what he wants. He wants to see the sun again, see his _son_ , to be home with Dorian in his arms and not know of any gods or demons or broken things. Instead he pulls himself to the barrier, hand coming up to stretch over hers, and gaze finding clarity for one last push. “No matter the cost, remember?”

The power in her palm slowly disappears. Determination quivers and snaps and she falls away with a wounded sound, face crumpling beneath the hand that tries to keep her sight blinded to this truth, and she might stay there forever if not for Taliesin shaking her shoulder as the light from outside turns from gold to bursting with colors. Keela lets him haul her up and drag her a few feet away before resistance springs back into her limbs.  

A quick movement and she is free from Taliesin’s grasp and rushes back, pressing against the field once more. “I will come back for you. I will bring you home to them, I promise.”

“I know,” he says, or tries to - he only hopes she can understand it somehow.

“Vaxus-”

“Keela, now!”

He’s not sure if anything more is said or when they leave, but when he looks next he is alone in the hallway, left alone to face this slow end seeping into his lung. No, not completely alone. Fingers tremble and falter a few times as he reaches between mail and fabric to find the necklace tucked safely away against his heart. The message crystal didn’t work within the bowels of the fortress but now it warms inside against skin, the gem glistening bright as he calls to its mate lands away.

The answer is almost immediate. “Amatus! Is it finished?” Dorian’s voice wrestles against the poison inside his heart and it isn’t enough but it _is_ , to hear this as the last thing he’ll ever know. “Amatus? Can you hear me?”

“I’m...I’m here,” he manages before falling into a coughing spell. Nothing helps - there is no more air inside that isn’t tainted, no more hope to hold a breath and see the waves touched edges of home again, but he has one last mission to perform before being swept away. “I’m sorry, Dorian. I tried but I couldn’t...I’m sorry.”

“Vaxus?” Worry leaks its way out of the crystal and he wishes-he wishes for so many things, feels them fall from his eyes to disappear and never to be collected again. “What’s happening?”

“The trap and...she left,” Had to, he wants to say, but the poison grips him tight and makes him gasp, makes him fills his lungs with this death that dulls everything. He can’t feel his body anymore or see beyond the tip of his nose and every heartbeat thuds like a hammer upon his chest. There is no time left. Whatever strength left in his warrior soul he pushes into his words now. “I love you Dorian. For always. You and Felix, I love you both so much. I know you’ll take care of him. Don’t-” _Don’t cry_ , he wants to say. _Don’t let this kill you too. Live, love. Live._

“I don’t, I-Vaxus.” Dorian sounds close to breaking and Vax wants to comfort him, to let him know that everything will be all right, that they’ll be all right, but there is nothing left to give. “I love you. I love you. Amatus, please. Stay with me.”

But he can’t. There is a last breath, air too heavy to release again as it smothers. There is a last heart beat echoing, the stillness that follows filled with Dorian’s voice begging and the world breaking somewhere beyond the windows. Then as the crystal falls from scar kissed hands there is silence, and in the last second before blackness Vaxus dreams of love.

 

art by trashwarden


	14. The Legacies of our Fathers

Morning drifts over the bed like cloth dipped into water, slow and steady and spreading over two forms tangled in sheets and nothing else. The sun’s touch wraps it fingers around Felix’s shoulder and gently brings him awake to a world still darkened at the edges when nothing feels solid, the time between times, a tangible dream before reality breaks. He hardly feels real. It seems like a long time since he ever slept so deeply, been a long time since exhaustion felt worthwhile instead of a burden, and he’s smiling before he even remembers the reason why. It’s not hard to find when he looks, however.

When he turns to find Fenera stretched out along the bed there is no screaming and confusion this time. Instead he watches her sleep for a few moments, watches her body move with each slow breath, watches the sun reach out to her next and wake the glistening, dark lines of her revallas. He can’t resist touching them either and follows them down her arm with gentle fingers. The memory of how they reacted last night flashes through his mind - how they danced like there was a summer storm beneath her skin when she came, and he’s sure he’ll never look at lightning the same ever again. She shifts now, grumbling and batting lazily in the direction of his hand, before turning upon her stomach to bury her face deep within the pillow. He is undaunted, forging ahead with fingers and lips to trace the many markings across her back instead.

She mumbles something into the down feathers he can’t catch. “What was that?”

“I said,” she groans again and rolls over, “Do you mind? I’m trying to sleep.”

“No, I don’t mind at all,” he replies as he maps his way across the lines stretching down her collar and over her heart. Feeling hers beat makes his sing in response and sleep flies from his mind when there are other, better things to do now. He lets his fingers stray from their amethyst paths to brush across softer skin and the sigh she lets out this time is softer too. “I’ve thought about getting them. Tattoos, I mean. I’ve even made some designs but...I don’t know, they could be better, but I’m just not sure how.”

“Hmm.” Fenera reaches out for him too, hands diving into his mussed hair. “I bet you would look very nice with ink. Could we try it? I can give you one like mine. Something small, I promise, and I promise it won’t hurt either.”

“You can give me revallas?”

She makes an offended noise as she sits up and pushes him back down into the bed to half cover him with herself. “Of course. Well?”

“All right.” It’s too easy to give into her. Here, swathed in sunlight and her skin, he can’t exactly remember why he would ever even resist.

Her hand lights little sparks above his heart as her mana weaves into him. A quiet hum accompanies each touch and he watches her eyes light up with blue as she works. There is no pain, only a tingle he resists the urge to scratch, but he doesn’t move in case such things would ruin the design or see a hole burned through his chest on accident. There is no need to worry, no time to really, as she is fast in proclaiming her task completed.

Felix looks down to find a blue _F_ made of leaves and vines shimmering back at him. He is slow to run his fingers over it, as if it might smear like wet ink, but it is like it is there and not, part of his body and part of her too. “There, and quite lovely work if I do say so myself. _F_ for Felix.”

“Not for Fenera?”

She gives a shrug, but the corners of lips curl. He chases after her smile, meeting her halfway for a kiss. They are a mess of the morning but neither seem to care, Fenera especially as his mouth follows the sound of her pulse and finds the spot on her neck that made her melt into his embrace last night.

“How about _F_ for Fast Learner?” she says, voice vibrating like a bowstring thrummed.

“I think _F_ for Fuc-”

She pulls away, gasping with feigned shock. “Felix Pavus! Watch your fucking mouth!”

He snorts while making his way down her shoulder with pioneering lips. “My sincerest apologies.”

“Yes, well, I suppose I can overlook it this time. Especially if you keep doing that.”

Her demands are agreeable but she doesn’t make his penance easy. As he tries to kiss her again she pulls away just out of reach, mischief clear in the cut of her mouth. His second attempt meets the same results and he does not try for a third. Instead he tries to capture her completely, rising up in the bed and grasping for whatever part of her he can claim with tickling fingers. They are a flurry of movement and laughter after that, each trying to catch the other with fingers and quick kisses, and everything about this moment is as cliché and ridiculous as every book he’s read with such things but he thinks he understands now. It’s a realization dawning slowly, one he’s avoided in the dark where things are all the same. Nothing feels the same anymore. Nothing makes sense either and yet it does, and he...

In the end their short lived battle finds him victorious and perched above her, although he knows he’s still at her mercy by the way her legs squeeze around his waist. Fenera isn’t the type to be captured unless she wants it, and he begins to believe he is her prisoner instead as he maps out the planes and peaks of her face, lost within a field of freckles and red kissed lips.

He is _happy_ , and for once the thought of reaching for it doesn’t hurt anymore. “Not regretting last night are you?” she asks.

“No.” If he regrets anything right now it’s that he didn’t do any of this sooner. She is tangled up in his life and it seems a strange thing to think of it without her there now. Dread would have been his first reaction once, but now it’s another type of nervousness that takes hold. He’s not sure how to express how he feels, not sure if he even knows it himself. “I, you...you’re different from other girls.”

Fenera’s bright eyes roll. “Haven’t met very many girls then, have you?”

“Wait-”

“You went with that tired old line? I know you’re hopeless but that is the worst of the worst.”

“No, wait.” He stops her from escaping the bed, hands holding her face and keeping her close. “I…when I look at you, _I_ feel different. You make everything different.”

“Well, that’s better.” Her arms snake around his neck again, pulling him close for a peck against his nose, and he feels the pleased hum of her magic from her lips. “And in that case...you’re not like other boys, either.”

Metal rattling against wood interrupts whatever further revelations were poised on tongues and thoughts. Felix follows the sound to find his message crystal dancing for attention atop the nightstand and reality finally surges back to life around him. “Shit!”

“What is that?” He climbs over her, ignoring her annoyed protests, and reaches for the necklace. “Is that a message crystal? I’ve never seen one do that before.”

“Then you’ve never ignored my father for too long. Be quiet.”

“Felix!” Dorian’s booming voice scares away the last wisps of sleep. “You live, contrary to all evidence you’ve provided lately.”

“Good morning to you too, Father.” A wicked glint sparks in Fenera’s eyes. She shifts their positions and begins peppering kisses down his chest, lips lingering over the revallas now there.

“I’ve received some interesting news with my breakfast this morning. A certain son of the Archon returning to the palace in the middle of the night, with a woman on his arm no less. Wouldn’t know the first thing about that would you?”

“I-ah!” Fenera choose that moment to bite into his side as she makes her way down his body and he tries to cover up his exclamation with a few coughs.

“Everything all right?”

He glares at her although it is made barely effective by the smile that won’t stay down. “Yes. What’s, uh, happening with the council?”

“Don’t think you’ll be able to shrug me off so easily. I asked you to remain in the palace.”

“So naughty,” Fenera whispers as she sucks on the cut of his hip, teases her breath over sensitive skin, and he has to bite back a moan.

“I’ve been waiting for years for you to do something brash for once but your timing is quite inconvenient. After today things are going to be...difficult. The Divine is giving her decision regarding the Inquisition. I’m sure the news has reached Arlahalam by now. There’s no chance Keela will let it stand. Maker knows she can’t stay out of anything.”

Fenera freezes, confusion replacing the glint in her eyes. “There will be a vote today. Useless really,” Dorian continues. “Divine Constance will also do as she pleases and I know it would please her to see any associate of Fen’Harel brought low. So please, don’t make me worry any more than I must.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Hm I’ve heard this before, I think. Do make sure you mean it this time. I should be home within the next two days and I hope we can talk then.”

“There’s...there’s a lot I have to tell you.”

“Good! I’ll just ignore that little bit of foreboding in your voice and pretend it’s pleasant news to get me through the day. I’ll see you soon, and keep that necklace close.”

“What is he talking about?” Fenera asks when Felix has put the stone back.

“I, uh…” She jumps from the bed, grabbing for a pile of clothes on the floor and throwing on one of his shirts. Her strong reaction stuns him for a moment, like he has insulted her in some way, and his own defenses rise. “What are you upset about?”

“Felix, what did he mean? About the Inquisition and Lavellan? Tell me.”

“She’ll get what she deserves, finally.”

“And what do you think she deserves?”

“To be the one to suffer for once.”

Fenera’s mouth hangs open at the venom in his words before snapping shut with a snarl. “Fuck you. I...I have to leave.”

He follows her, hoping into a pair of pants and crossing the room. “I’m sorry I don’t worship the ground they walk on. Unlike you, apparently. You wouldn’t if you knew the truth.”

“Like you know anything about them!” she yells as she reaches the door, and bliss breaks into jagged pieces in his heart. He doesn’t want this.

“Wait.”

“Let me go!” She gives a tug on his hold on her arm, but it’s not enough to pull it free, like she can’t decide whether she wants to move or not.

“I do. I do know about them. Things that they’ve hidden or lied about. Things that…” He takes a breath, trying to calm himself further. He shouldn’t lash out at her, shouldn’t push her away like those early days between them. It’s still not her that makes his blood go cold, not her fault his one father is dead and the other has been living half alive for so long.

“You hate them.” He does. He hates them and it’s been a worm eating away at him that he could never tell another person about before. “Why?”

“I…”

Instead of pulling away further, Fenera steps into his touch, anger still burning around the edges of her eyes but there is another light inside them, something concerned and darkly curious. “Felix. Tell me, please?”

“Okay. Come with me.”

He takes her through the glistening halls of the palace, down to corridors dimly lit and cool still in the early morning. They reach heavy stone doors bracketed by sculptures of skeletons charging on ghostly chariots, eerie green fire burning in torches outstretched in bony fingers.

“Have you been in here?” he asks, not sure if it will please him more to hear yes or no. It’s a place no one should meddle with but it would help him from having to finally tell a story that has overwritten most of his life.

Fenera shivers. “No. It’s creepy and the protection spell is…there’s a lot of emotion mixed in it. I might be a snoop but I’m not a complete dick.”

Felix wraps his hand around the elaborate handle and feels his father’s ward reach out to lick against his skin tasting for the bonded blood in his veins. It sighs as it accepts him and swings open the great doors to reveal shadow and stone and silent things. They walk beyond coffins and coffers, urns and trinkets and gems, all belonging to the royal blood of Tevinter since the beginning of the empire. Fenera sticks close to his side as they travel further across the long hallway and down forking steps where a large statue of Archon Radonis stands guard. 

Felix pauses at the entrance to a room beyond. He knows what’s inside. A vault, two open tombs and one closed even though no body rests inside. An end, when the world began anew. Fingers fold into his and give a squeeze, and he finds Fenera with a smile even as her own trepidation fogs her features. He wants to tell her, to begin to bury these burdens for good, but standing here on the threshold is a greater task than anything he’s ever done before. When he leads them inside he uses her touch as a tether against the turmoil ahead.

“This is my family’s vault,” he begins as they approached the coffin and statue to the left where Vaxus’ hollow eyes follow his every move. “And this…this is my father’s grave.”

“Dorian isn’t your real father?”

“I don’t know my blood father. They adopted me.”

“Oh.” Fenera leans closer to read the sculpture’s plaque. “The Likeness of Vaxus Trevelya-wait, I know him. He was in the Inquisition. He was your father?”

“Not many people knew. They kept things private and there were bigger things happening to worry about I guess. He was gone for years before my father became Archon, although I know there are still rumors.”

“I didn’t know, I just thought…my parents told me June killed him.”

“No, she did.”

Fenera whips her attention back to him. “What?”

But he can’t look at her for this and instead focuses on the designs around his papa’s coffin. “He was trapped and she left him there to die. She didn’t even try to save him. She let him die like all the other friends she’s sacrificed for her legacy. All she brought back of him too was his sword. She’s...she’s just as big a monster as Fen’Harel to me. If not for both of them I would still have a family.”

Quiet creeps into the crypt again when he’s finished. He doesn’t look at her until her hand releases his and finds a horrified look upon her face, disbelief and disgust there in equal measure, but he’s not sure who it is directed at - him, for daring to tell such tales, or them, for not revealing the whole truth to so many people. He imagines it is a hard thing to swallow, but he desperately wants her to believe him even as he plans for her to fight back against all he’s said.

Neither acceptance nor denial is what comes next, however. “I...I have to go.”

It is his turn to be surprised. “What? You...I tell you all this and you’re just going to leave? I’ve never-what’s wrong?”

“Everything! I have to go home. You don’t understand, you don’t know-”

“Then tell me!”

“I will, I promise. I’ll come back, but I can’t- I need to go. I’m sorry, Felix. I’m…” She shakes her and takes a few steps away from him, hands coming up as if she can push back all the words he has thrown at her, and of all possible reactions he never imagined _fear_ to be the one that would cover her face either.

“Okay.” He blinks and she is gone, no boots or swish of cloth to mark her departure. There is only the memory of life around him, voices screaming without sound, stone beneath his feet and pressing against his shoulders with the weight of dried bones and failed futures.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

He doesn’t see her again for almost two days. The world is in an uproar over Divine Constance’s decree so at first he worries. There’s no way to reach her, no surname known, and he can’t exactly beseech anyone in Elvhenan regardless. The Elven country has closed most of its borders and eluvians to protect their own. His worry festers into suspicion, worst case scenario shifting from fatality to falsehood, but he tries to push these intrusive thoughts away. He wants things to be different, _he_ wants to be different, and mistrust is something to stop grasping to so tightly.

Every morning he wakes and rolls over to search empty sheets, at night keeps his eyes on the window sill until they can’t stay open anymore. It seems the moment he stops thinking about her is when she finally appears. The need for distraction drives him to the alchemy tower to bury himself in his studies and hopes of finding some concoction to bring relief to his impatient mind. He doesn’t notice her at first as he grabs ingredients and bottles from the shelves and all but throws them upon his work table. He doesn’t notice until she clears her throat and startles him to attention.  

“Fen!”

She pushes off the wall and approaches him, all cutting smiles and carefree gait. There’s armor mixed in with her leathers now, the hilts of twin daggers crossing upon her back, but he doesn’t feel any fear and only relief to see her unharmed. “Hello, Felix.”

“Are you-are you all right?”

A gloved finger draws a line down the table. “Just fine, you?”

“I didn’t think you were coming back.” He takes a few steps towards her only to falter when she takes just as many away in return. It’s a careful distance she maintains between them and he tries not to worry about what that might mean. So much has happened in so little time after all but he wants...he wants feel her skin against his, to feel that clarity that he can’t seem to find anywhere else. “I was afraid you might-”

“Look. This will be a lot easier for the both of us if you just let me do the talking. I don’t want any more collateral than what’s already here. I’ve come back to say goodbye for good this time.”

“I...what?” 

“It was fun and now it’s not anymore, okay? I don’t get serious and it’s gotten too real. I didn’t mean to let it get so far. I doubt we can go back to before now though so I’m out.”

“Why? Because we, we-”

Fenera sighs, like he is an overindulged child. “It’s not just the sex, but I should have known better than to think you could separate it from feeling anything. I don’t want your love, Felix, and I don’t want your extra baggage either. I can’t help you with it. I appreciate how difficult it must have been for you to tell me about your father, but I don’t want any of it. I’m sorry.”

He hears every word but they twist into different patterns inside his brain to something that makes no sense even as the part of him that’s curled around his heart like dark smoke gloats and tuts. _See_ , it says. _I was right all along. This is how it always ends._  “I don’t believe you,” he says, not sure who he is speaking to.

A smile, and the soft pity in it is a sharp dagger. “I’ve had a good time with you but I think it best that we don’t see each other anymore. Thanks to Divine Constance, and your father, I doubt I’ll even be able to sneak around Thedas anymore easily anyway. Maybe someday we’ll get together again though, yeah? Teach you lesson sixty-nine.” Fenera steps closer and pats him on the cheek and he feels himself recoil. “Bye, Felix.”

She doesn’t disappear in a flurry of sparks or escape on swift feet. She takes her time, steps slow and easy like she hasn’t turned the world on its head, like he’ll be able to walk away from this with head held just as high. There is no glance back as she sweeps through the door, no thought to what she is leaving behind. The crypt is far below him and yet he feels the ghosts pull on his ankles as another thing in his life dies, but it is not the cold touch of uncaring stone that seals him in this time. It is the fire that turns precious things to ash and he lets it consume as he reaches out and swipes an arm across the cluttered table.

Glass crashes and papers litter, potions seeping into the parchment or spreading through cracks in the ground. _This is how it always ends_ , the darkness says, and that he no longer doubts anymore.

art by trashwarden


	15. A Verdict Before the Trial

Dorian sighs as he tucks away the message crystal back beneath his robes. It settles above his heart which swirls with a mixture of pride and guilt, worry and excitement. He allows himself a moment more to dwell upon the contents of his letter and his conversation with his son.

_“Lord Pavus arrived a quarter passed the second hour with a woman of unknown origins. White dress, dark hair, with many purple tattoos. Guards did not detain her as the lord proclaimed her an acquaintance and, according to reports, they indeed seemed…well acquainted.”_

He can imagine the guard captain’s face at such a statement and gives a quick laugh at that. Did Gwendolyn have tattoos? There were none visible that he can remember, which makes him question the state of dress she wore. Perhaps it is another suitor? Seems unlikely, although so many things do these days. His son, disobeying orders and breaking curfew. An Inquisition beginning all anew. He would think the world has been turned inside out if he hadn’t already lived through that experience.

The letter is place with his other documents before he scoops them all up and carries them out of his rooms. Guards step into his wake as he walks through the halls of the palace and out into the open streets of Val Royeaux. A carriage waits to whisk him away to the chantry and a familiar figure waits within. “Good morning,” Maevaris greets him.

“It is still too early to tell what kind of morning it will be,” he utters as he climbs inside.

“Always the pessimist.”

“I dropped most of my optimism somewhere in the Fallow Mire years ago. Or was it the Western Approach? Still finding pieces of that place in my armor.”

“You are not. Mostly because I doubt you would keep such old styles for so long.”

“True, but I have been known to be sentimental.”

Mae gives a snort. “I’m sure the last person to accuse you of such is still held in the dungeons. I won’t make the same mistake of suggesting it.”

“I could never lock you away, my dear. I’d have to remember everyone’s names myself then.”

“Well it’s good to know you keep me around for just my usefulness.”

“Don’t sulk, it’s a compliment. Most people are utterly useless.”

It is an easy thing to slip into banter with her and he is glad for the distraction as they draw nearer to the Divine and her decision. He is used to making monumental decisions himself these days, silently bemoans the endless duties, but now finds it frustrating that such a large one is mostly out of his hands. Especially when it is likely to affect his country and his family. Not that he disagrees with the nature of this verdict. To disagree with seeking this justice would be a betrayal to Thedas - if he feels any trepidation it is because he fears that others involved may be caught in some zealous quest, himself included. He needs to be there to voice his concerns, to make sure that justice doesn’t become vengeance, but not for _their_ benefit. No, that would be absurd.

The crowds around the chantry part for him as they make their way towards Divine Constance’s private corridors and rooms within the massive building. He knows when they reach them by the austere decorations that all but clutter grand spaces, and he instantly misses Vivienne. He misses her for the other things too of course, and often, but hers was a style holy unto itself, something that deserved hymns for how it sang of grace and elegance. There is nothing sanctimonious about Constance’s gaudy tastes, each hallway more gilded than the next, although the decorations are only one reason coming to this place makes him uneasy these days. So much of his good friend’s work is unraveling with each new tapestry hung, each forward step Divine Victoria made reversed by backwards thinking. This decision might be another thing to see progress undone, its impact more disastrous than unnecessary, opulent curtains.

“Don’t they preach about being poor in possession but rich in heart?” Mae whispers at his side. “Constance must have skipped that sermon.”

The Divine waits for them upon a polished throne as they enter the council chamber. She sits above a round table, regalia adorned with flashing gems and fancy gold. Many of Thedas’ most powerful turn to watch them cross to their own seats - Queen Madelina of Antiva, Bann Cousland from Ferelden, Grand Seer Radhiya of Rivain. Dorian nods to Prince Gaspard of Orlais, already a much more sensible ruler than his father thanks to someone’s nimble, elven fingers. He would worry about so many leaders in one place if not for the multitude of guards and spells woven into this place, his own as well as trusted allies. He won’t be allowing this Inquisition to begin the same as the last, if it truly begins at all.

There is an empty place at the table usually filled by one of Elvhenan’s dignitaries, usually _her_ , but he thinks this was an invite lost in the mail or never sent at all. Bells ring to start the meeting, a long prayer spoken by a sister of the order, a large medallion draped over the Divine’s neck to signify the heavy weight of service, and Dorian does his best not to roll his eyes. “Let us now carry on with this most delicate of tasks,” Constance says, voice low with somber resolve. “Bring them inside.”

Side doors open and a flurry of whispers and gasps echo around the room as masked figures enter. Dorian is too stunned for a moment to react at seeing the silver, shining symbol of the Inquisition placed above hearts. In his mind he can hear the roar of a dragon, the pop of a rift as it closes. The Inquisitor’s crown is different this time, built into a mask that covers the face of someone tall but lean, no discernible features found as they are hidden behind light armor. There is another that accompanies him, a figure broad and built like a warrior with a greatsword strapped in easy reach. Their identity is kept secret too, but there’s something familiar about them. Their gait, perhaps? He can’t quite place it, but he fills with an unease he can’t quite understand.

“We have asked you to come and vote upon reinstating the Inquisition for the holy task of bringing those that put the fate of the world into their own hands to justice, one Keela Lavellan and Solas, also known as Fen’Harel. They did not seek Chantry approval, nor did they seek the approval of the majority of ruling houses within Thedas.” Dorian doesn’t miss how Constance’s eyes flit to him briefly. “I would have them brought before us so we may finally give our sentence for their deeds which have greatly altered our way of life. Today we would hear your opinions before giving final decree.”

“Why the masks?” Radhiya asks right away, suspicion easy enough to read on her face.

“Could never trust a bloke with one,” Cousland adds, a joking jab at the Orlesian prince across the table, and Gaspard smiles behind his own silver half mask. “Or one that didn’t give me his name when he knew mine.”

“We wear them to show that justice is blind. We do not come for glory or recognition, do not come as singular individuals with personal goals. What we do is for Thedas alone.” Dorian doesn’t recognize the voice of the would be Inquisitor, nor does it appear that anyone else seated does as well. There is an accent to their voice that he can’t quite place, however, not Antivan or Orlesian, but something he knows. “As for my name, if I am to be Inquisitor I would be called Entulesfaile.”

“An Elven name? If I can remember correctly, something akin to ‘the return of glory’,” Gaspard says.

“There will be no doubt as to why we seek them out.”

“A noble pursuit,” Dorian speaks next, “and yet what will this blind justice entail exactly? I’ve witnessed plenty of fanatical organizations to know what could lead to the beginnings of one.”

“Archon Pavus was partially responsible for creating the spell to sunder the Veil,” Constance says, surely repeating what they already know for the pageantry of the moment, and he imagines little sparks igniting on the top of her towering hat. “Many assisted in some regard.”

“And they have nothing to fear from us, unless they interfere with completing our goal. We do not hold the flock responsible for the wrong decisions of its shepherd. As for our plans for Fen’Harel and Keela Lavellan - there will be a trial held. We have proposed the new Inquisition stronghold be at Therinfal Redoubt as it still lies unused but in good enough condition for our purposes. A jury made of Thedas’ leaders, such as yourselves, will hear arguments for and against any punishments, and will put forth a verdict at trial’s end. I will act as judge over the proceedings and be responsible for summoning the defendants as well as seeing their sentence carried out.”

“And I imagine you are willing to do what’s necessary if they do not come quietly?”

“Justice will be done.” Dorian is tired of hearing this word, its meaning easily becoming polluted the more it is uttered.

“You do realize they are, without a doubt, two of the most powerful mages in Thedas,” Maevaris says. “You’d likely need an army if they resist and even then-”

“They have intimidated many with their stolen powers, good people such as yourselves and others who have witnessed the unfairness, but I do not fear them. They will be made to answer for their crimes, this I assure you.” 

Dorian doesn’t like the possible implications to this. If they possess the means to cage Keela and Solas indefinitely, then they could capture anyone. Of course, he also was able to assist in the downfall of gods himself and knows the power mortals can obtain if necessary, or if they are desperate enough. For all he knows now they could emulate the very methods used to bring the Evanuris to heel although those methods were of a more…permanent nature.

“We believe a Chantry organization is best suited towards this task, as we serve neither state nor government, nor the interests of any particular race. I will make my decision now and would hear your final thoughts on the matter of reinstating the Inquisition only. Please.” Constance gestures to the closest representative.

“I vote yes,” Queen Madelina announces. “To allow them to go unopposed sends a terrible message, that ruling authorities should not be consulted in such matters. We cannot have our world overturned at the whims of individuals again.”

“I vote in favor of a trial, so yes,” Gaspard says and the surprise must show on some faces. “I withhold my opinion on anything else. It is only that I believe a trial of this nature, if it will be as you say, might prove beneficial.”

“No,” Radhiya says, arms crossing. “Rivain suffers no troubles for it, as would most of you if you’d let go of your old ways. Even so, it has been twenty years in the passing. It is dust in the wind now. If something were to be done it should have been long before this day.”

Cousland begins with a laugh. “You’re all mad. This is mad. Are we going to start an Inquisition against everyone that disagrees with the Divine?” Constance frowns, shifting in her seat. “Who’s to say you wouldn’t go after one of us next? I’ll not support or be part of some revenge cult, as I’m sure the king and queen will agree.”

“Thank you for sharing your opinion,” Constance says, face suggesting she is not thankful at all. “Archon Pavus?”

What is his opinion on the matter? His immediate thought is to shout yes, to be one of the first to slap irons upon their wrists and see them walk towards a fate they would gladly force onto others, and it is the voice of twenty years of loss, of an anger that has curled in upon itself and blackened so it’s impossible to distinguish the pieces anymore. It is the voice of a wounded animal whose first instinct will always be to lash out. 

But it has been _twenty years_ and he is more than some feral thing made of rage and bitterness. He is a veteran of the Inquisition who saw zealotry in spare in the eyes of Venatori and Red Templars, and he sees it now even in eyes half hidden by masks. He is the Archon of Tevinter and knows elven relations within his country and on his borders is already a strained thing, and war is still a battle cry ringing. He is also a father that must protect his son, even if that son will likely never speak to him again if he learns Dorian spoke against the Inquisition’s founding today. Nothing good will come of this, so far as most things that involve that pair usually go.

“I-”

He is saved from ever having a say one way or another as the doors groan open and every person there turns to see the trio that enters. The gasps of surprise when the would be Inquisitor entered are nothing compared to the ones that fill the room as the former one does. Swathed in golden armor, heavy enough for battle yet ornate in design, the sway of a cape and skirt mimicking a deadly dance around her. Fire forms in her false arm, flames of scarlet licking inside clear fingers, and he remembers the first time he sees it in action. _Should’ve filled it with bees_ , Sera says and there is laughter even in the darkest times. Dorian’s heart lurches in his chest to see her, to be thrown back so many years, but he must acknowledge that Keela Lavellan always knows how to take an audience by force.  

Constance leaps from her throne. “You!”

“Am I interrupting something? I could not be, as you would surely not call a meeting of such high importance without including a representative from Elvhenan.” Keela’s eyes sweep over the pair wearing her symbol, gaze narrowing at the leader.

“As this delicate matter pertains to you, it is improper to have you present. We dem-”

“There are others you could have called upon. That you did not will not be something forgotten by my country.”

“A threat, Lavellan?”

“No, but I do not need to cower behind a table of betters and an army to make mine.” Maevaris lets out a quiet chuckle as the Divine’s face turns as red as her robes. “You hide behind this false pretense of a trial when you have already decided the verdict.”

“Do you claim to be innocent?”

“I claim no such thing, but I will not bend knee only for the purpose of making you rise higher.”

“How dare-”

“There are forces already overrunning Therinfall, former members of Wolfsbane joining their ranks. What should I expect to find in the care of those that have tried to take my life? That have used torture and murder to try and reach me? I will face justice willingly, but this will be no such thing.”

Dorian did not know of the assassins merging with the Inquisition, but it doesn’t surprise him to hear with all his suspicions of this organization already. He remembers the reports years ago of Wolfsbane hunting Keela and Solas, and their retaliation thought complete, but apparently not nearly enough.

“I will hear no more! The decision has been made.” Constance takes a breath and he braces himself for all that will come of it. “As of this moment, the Inquisition is born anew. Inquisitor Entulesfaile, your first holy mandate is to apprehend Keela Lavellan and Solas so they may be supervised until their trial. By any means necessary.”

“Now wait a minute-” Cousland’s outrage is interrupted as the doors open once more and dozens of Inquisition agents pour into the room and lines the walls. Surrounded, but there is no fear in Keela’s eyes, only a hardness he has seen before when demons rained down from the sky and swords sliced through the air.

“Keela Lavellan.” Inquisitor Entulesfaile strides forward with his second not far behind and Keela’s entourage steps closer as a result, pivoting to face the other agents moving in. Not the greatest of odds, but Dorian isn’t fool enough to think that matters when it comes to her. To them, once. “On behalf of Divine Constance I am charged with detaining you for your crimes against Thedas. Will you come quietly?”

“Not for you, harellan.”

“I urge you to reconsider. To consider the well being of your people, your family.” Dorian cannot see their mouth, but he knows the Inquisitor smiles nonetheless, and something like fear crawls down his spine. He knows the terror of someone threatening his family, of what it is to watch it splinter apart at the hands of another.  

The fierceness in Keela’s eyes falter a bit at that, the fire in her arm shifting before everything burns brighter and harsher. “You will not touch them.”

“What casualties to come will be on your head, da’len. Submit.”

There is a moment that it looks like she might. Dorian can see the tally counting of how many might suffer for this next decision, can imagine she’s thinking of the best way to protect her children from this storm. Keela meets his gaze for the first time, just a brief touch, but in it there is a thousand words shared between them and a thousand more that have been left unsaid for twenty years, and the ache inside for the way things once were is a traitorous thing he does his best to stamp out. It wants to join her, to stand by her side again and laugh as nightmares bursts from his fingertips at those deserving darker deeds, but it is not his place. Not anymore. Even so, he knows exactly what she will say next.

“Never.” She pounds her false arm into the ground and a shockwave of air and light pushes them all back. When the dust settles she and her guard are gone. No tell tale footprints or outlines to give them away, no spell to pick at like sticky spiderwebs around them. Simply gone - a new trick, and he wonders where she learned this one from, or what she has become with all the gods’ blood that stains her hands.  

“Spread out, search the building. They could not have gotten far,” Entulesfaile orders.

Guards, sisters, agents and royals rush about the room or raise from the table shouting while the Divine watches it all with a glint of pleasure in her eye. For his part, Dorian sits back in his chair and lets out a long sigh, takes his time inhaling what will likely be his last, long easy breath for a while to come. “Wonderful.”

  


art by trashwarden


	16. An Ocean Without Bottom

He wishes it would rain. He wishes there were dark storm clouds greying the sky, wind that whips at clothes and tears memories away as the great, thunderous roar of nature makes it too difficult to remember anything save for safe places to hide from the onslaught. He wants the world to crack and roll around him like the great storm swirling within, to be able to scream and hear nothing but the silence made by too much sound. However the day turns into something beautiful with soft, puffy clouds strolling lazily across a sun kissed sky. Flowers seem to shine brighter, bigger, and there is happy birdsong to keep him company as he sits on the windowsill.

He wants to send a fireball straight at the nearest tree. Instead he hops down from the ledge and makes his way to Vaxus’ training room. His papa never set foot in here, but it is his room all the same, filled with armor and weapons, books and trinkets. It is a room that should have been filled with his laughter and heartbeats and the idea makes his thoughts turn ever darker. Torchlight ripples down the Trevelyan sword held in its place of prestige and the memories of the times he’s touched it is there in its reflection - perched on Vax’s lap, a big hand over his as they guide the whetstone across steel, the way he sags under its weight and Dorian’s pained gaze when he tries to hold it on his own.

Felix shrugs off his overcoat and reaches for it, feels the worn leather of the hilt smooth against his palm, the balance he could never appreciate when he was smaller than the sword. Old worries and warning eat at him, but he ignores them this time. _This_ is his inheritance too and if it can’t belong to his papa anymore let it belong to him. He tries to clear his mind and begin moving through warrior poses. It’s a hard thing to do, as remembering them ultimately leads him to thinking of his teacher, which makes him grip a little too hard and swing through ungraceful arcs.

“Stop thinking about her,” he reminds himself. He should think about the Inquisition instead, about the peace it might bring his family if it is successful and what reparations will be made. Nothing will bring his papa back, but the truth of his death is a thing he would see dragged out into the light, and they are the ones that need to be held responsible.

Thoughts drift like leaves in the wind as sweat begins to beads on his skin and each pose becomes as mindless as breathing. Muscles strain, the ache burning away the rest of the world save for an imaginary square around him as he moves from point to point, pictures each obstacle in his way while he slices and thrusts and fights for this space of his own. He decides he’s grateful to Fenera after all. If not for her he may have never found the courage to grasp hold of this, never challenged himself to finally become what he’s always wanted to be. And she reinforced something he’s always known but forgot for a time - love only leads to tragedy. Without its chains he can do whatever he wants and never worry about consequences or _complications_. It is better this way.

“Seems like someone’s been busy since I’ve been gone.”

Felix almost drops the sword to hear Dorian’s voice coming from the doorway. He leans against the wood, arms crossed with an ease that speaks of standing there for some time. “Father! Uh, I…it’s-”

Dorian pushes off and walks inside, face and stature that of the Archon instead of father. “It’s not what it looks like? It looks like my son is wielding my husband’s sword with a skill that he should not possess in the short time I’ve been gone so he must have been honing this craft under my unknowing nose for months at least. What it looks like to me is that I’ve been lied to for some time. Am I close?”

There’s no point in denying it any longer. Felix knows the answer is plain on his face, the mask of lies paper thin and flaking away under this deluge. This is not how he wanted his father to find out, but there’s some relief that the truth is no longer a caged up box inside him anymore. “Yes, but I-”

“You can explain? Let me save you the trouble. The why is very simple.” Dorian’s severity slips away to something softer, a guilty resignation. “Because I was wrong.”

It’s the last thing Felix expects to hear. “What?”

“Oh don’t make me repeat myself. You know how I hate admitting any fault to begin with.” His father smiles in reassurance, for them both it seems. “I’m not upset. Well, no, that’s not entirely true. I’m not at all pleased you lied to me, but I understand. In the past I’ve made it quite clear how I feel about the subject, something you are obviously passionate about, and forced you to hide it from me. That… was unfair of me, and something I’ve never wanted.”

Dorian taps a finger against the pommel of the sword, fondness and longing and a thousand memories in his eyes. “Thought I might expire to see it being used again. It suits you, Felix.”

“I…thank you.”

“I was wondering _why now_ but I do believe I know the answer to that as well. What else began just a few months ago? Mentions of one Gwendolyn Thorburn. My son, engaging in clandestine activities to impress a suitor. How romantic.”

Felix feels his face burning. “No, that’s not- I didn’t do this to impress anyone. She…encouraged me.”

“I see. The _how_ is the only question I have remaining. How was this achieved? Surely you didn’t consult one of the guards or else I have some cleaning house to do.”

“No! It’s not their fault. It was-it was her.”

Dorian’s eyebrows shoot up. “Truly? She didn’t seem the type, but I suppose it’s not surprising considering her origins. I’m sure all Ferelden maidens have a sword shoved up their bodices. Well then, I’ll have to thank her for doing what I couldn’t. Is she coming by anytime soon?”

“Uh, no. She won’t be coming back anymore.”

“Really? What’s happened?”

“We…” The truth tangles up on his tongue for this - he doesn’t want to admit that Fenera bested him yet again, not with magic and quick footwork but with stolen breaths and smiles that only turned sharp in the end. It doesn’t matter anymore, when all is said and done, and he is grateful for that too. “She didn’t turn out to be who I thought she was. We’re no longer together, if we were at all.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I’ll be fine. I’m sorry, Father. For lying to you. No matter what it wasn’t right and I shouldn’t have done it but I want this. I want to be more than an Altus or a Magister and I…I’m not giving it up. I’m sorry if that disappoints you-”

“Stop, Felix.” Dorian puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes. “You have my blessing, however hesitant it may seem.’

“Are you serious?”

“Let’s find you a vetted trainer going forward though, shall we? If you’re going to be risking life and limb I at least want some reassurances.”

“Father.” Felix steps forward and embraces him tightly. “Thank you.”

Surprise makes Dorian return the affection slowly, but once he does his arms are strong around his son, muscles remembering what hasn’t be done for far too long, what shouldn’t have been let to atrophy with the malaise of loss. It doesn’t seem Dorian wants to give this up again as he holds on just a little longer than necessary, although maybe it is. If his eyes are a bit watery when he lets go Felix doesn’t mention it, not when he feels emotions tickling behind his as well.

“Right well, with that out of the way we have the Inquisition to still discuss. Come, walk with me in the gardens.”

Dorian tells him the details of the council that could not be shared through crystal and lack of time. Of Divine Constance’s choice, on which side the other representatives placed themselves and of the Inquisitor’s strange appearance. Anybody could be insides those masks - Felix could be too. By now everyone knows that Keela Lavellan interrupted the meeting and yet it is different to hear it from one who was there, especially one that is his father whose history with the elf colors every word. It is with some reverence that he speaks of her escapades and not with any of the vitriol or defeat Felix would have once heard. The difference is startling and something like barbed disbelief sticks to the sides of his lungs. He’s not sure what he imagined would happen, that perhaps they would rush off together to join the Inquisition, but it wasn’t this softness for things that have always been so hard.

“You sound like you approve of her actions.”

Dorian is silent for a moment, eyes upon his feet as if he is imagining some way through his next words. “Had I been given a chance to speak, I would have voted against the Inquisition.”

Felix stops. “What? Why?”

“I know you want justice for your father-”

“And you don’t?”

“Divine Constance’s brand of justice will end with a pyre and I’m afraid many more will be caught in the flames than simply those being currently hunted. She has no interest in justice, nor do I believe this Inquisitor does. There is something…wrong with them. I’m not sure what it is, but I know a zealot when I see one even if they wear a mask. So no, I do not want this false justice. Tevinter will take no part in it.”

“But they-”

“Would you see them killed?”

Would he? He knows their deaths won’t bring his papa back but he doesn’t care on some nights when chains of memory and dreams of what could have been seem to hold him down. He’s never been the violent type either and yet this wound has festered inside him for so long he’s not sure who he is without its dark touch. No, he doesn’t want them to die - he only wishes they didn’t get to live so easily while others suffer. He only wishes he could look Lavellan in the face and tell her his papa didn’t deserve to die because of her.

“That is surely what will happen and I imagine Constance will make examples of them. Rather messy examples, if I know her. You wish to move forward? I would like to move forward as well.” Dorian takes a deep breath and places his hand upon his shoulder. “We need to let go, Felix.”

He moves out of his father’s grasp. “So what, you just want to forget it all? Offer them over for tea and asylum?”

“I’m the last person either of them is likely to crawl to. No very big on accepting aid, those two, as history has shown.”

“But if they did?” Dorian doesn’t have to answer for the grimace on his face is telling enough.

“Felix-”

“Archon Pavus.” A heavy voice and boots on gravel interrupt them as the captain of the guard appears. “I’m sorry to intrude, but you wished to know when the Magisterium was summoned. They await you.”

“Yes, thank you. Excuse me, Felix. We’ll talk later.”

It sounds more like a question than anything, and as his father goes one way he goes the other. He has no destination in mind, only that he needs to move, needs to do something while his mind seems to run in circles. He feels like he’s treading water, stuck in the middle of an ocean with no floor to be felt beneath. There are too many things churning around him - who he was, who he is now, who he wants to be with a current pulling at his feet made up of all the could have beens, and even Dorian isn’t a set point on his horizon anymore. He thought he was getting everything he wanted and now…now everything tastes wrong, bitter and choking like salt water.

Weeks pass but not without incident. Dorian’s intuition proves to be true - the new Inquisitor stirs discord into Thedas, hiding behind divine calling and encouraging extremists to rise to the surface. They never speak of violence or hatred themselves but instead let the people cry it out until everything seems to be boiling over, justice giving way to something that demands blood and ruin. As riots claim lives and parts of cities, Divine Constance declares those that hide from her will be brought to it by any means necessary.

“Elvhenan won’t give them up,” he hears someone say as he walks through campus with what feels like a whole regiment of guards.

“They should. They’re going to start a war, people are being hurt already. Since the eluvians are closed I heard the Inquisition is sending its army on foot. Should be another week before they get there.”

“I heard Lavellan and her family aren’t even in Elvhenan anymore. Fen’Harel’s taken them to some secret place in the Fade.”

“I heard- oh look, it’s the Archon’s son. Do you think-”

He doesn’t want to know what they think anymore. He’s trying to move forward like he wanted, like his father wants. Their subsequent conversations have been stilted somewhat as they both try to navigate through new terrain together and Felix wants to stay close to his side. If Dorian of all people can move on from this, he should be able to as well, although he knows they’ll need each other to see it done. Other things are changing too - in two days’ time Felix’s new sword instructor will be temporarily moving into the palace and everyone has been all abuzz about Carver Hawke’s arrival. He has a feeling it will be difficult to keep the whole house out of his training sessions with the famous, former Templar there.

The past still lingers, however. With all the news of Lavellan circulating it is impossible to push them from his mind. He feels like he relives the day his father came to tell him the horrible news every single time he hears a new report or piece of gossip. It still feels like a betrayal every time he picks up his papa’s sword even if it is no longer some taboo because Vaxus should be here to see it, to be the one to pass it into his hands and give expert advice. Every step forward gets pulled upon by things that would hold him back and even if he is excited for the prospect of running free it is tiring now.

And, despite his best efforts, he thinks of Fenera. It is hard not to with her revallas still etched into him, the blue lines fading but still present. Before the sight of it made him almost nauseous, that feeling of a mistake made that you cannot escape. He tries to scrub it away, tries to wrap his own magic around it to null the spell, but it remains as stubbornly as her memory. Now he finds himself tracing the pattern through his shirt sometimes when he’s thinking, wanting to tell her of his father’s decision about training or imagining how she would turn something innocuous into some innuendo. He is used to the feeling of loss, but for so long it has been a grandfather clock in the corner, always there to remind of him of what is gone and yet part of his life like a decoration. Now it feels more present, literally written into his skin.

He shouldn’t miss her. The moment he let the guards around his life fall to invite an ally inside she only attacked, leaving him alone in rubble and with no idea how to rebuild. He only plans to make the walls higher this time, thicker so he won’t even be tempted by the promises made from the other side. He may, in time, change his mind about Lavellan and Solas in some regard, may change his body as he becomes a warrior his papa could be proud of, but his heart…he should have never believed it could ever be anything different, should never have wanted to change the rhythm of its song when it was the only thing steady in his life.

Almost three weeks since she said goodbye for the last time he thinks he might be free of her, the design of the revallas only a faint outline barely seen upon him now, but their fates seem to be a tangle of lines still knotted when one of his personal guards approaches him inside the alchemy tower. “Lord Pavus? Gwendolyn Thorburn is here. The…other one, sir.”

His pulse races with the idea that Fenera has returned. He doesn’t even care that his guard seems to know their secret - it’s less of a surprise than knowing she is near. Why is she here? And why, for once, hasn’t she simply barged into his life and instead is calling upon him like a normal person? He doesn’t want to find out, shouldn’t want to find out. She made her intentions clear last time and there can be no reason for them to speak again. He can’t believe she would have the nerve to even try it after their last meeting. After everything.

“Whatever she wants I have no intention of hearing it. Send her away,” he says, ignoring how his foot twitches like it might chase after her on its own. He goes back to his work, focusing on the letters on the pages like they hold all the secrets to the universe. A moment passes before the woman at the door clears her throat and he looks up to see her uncomfortable and a little…is it concerned? His building rage coils with a new tension especially with their next words.

“I think you might want to come, my lord.”

“What is it?”

“I think…I think she might be dying.”


	17. Official Introductions Made

_Dying_. He sees a crystal gone cold in his father’s hands when he comes to tell him the news, feels the solid strength of a coffin as he cries and cries and Dorian grips too hard to his shoulder. Felix is out the door and down the steps without even thinking. “Where is she?”

“In the gardens where we found her. This way. We sent for the healer already although I’m not sure this is something that can be healed, sir.”

“What do you mean?”

“I...I think you just need to see it.”

It takes him a moment to understand just what he’s seeing when he does. They’ve hid her away in one of the gazebos draped in ivy but there are flashes of purple light through the leaves, the air filled with the Fade so it feels like he is pushing through something with weight. He knows something is wrong as fear and pain brush against him like sticky cobwebs. Fenera sits on the ground with her back against a bench, tattoos flashing and parts of her wavering. He watches her hand fade, its outline a hazy thing, before it becomes solid again.

“Felix!” He tries to grasp the hand that reaches for him but it disappears completely this time and his fingers go right through it. She makes a frustrated, wounded noise as her eyes close in concentration. Her hand returns after a few desperate seconds and he notices the shine of her revallas seems to dim from it.

He looks up to the healer. “What’s happening?”

“I don’t know, my lord. This is no physical ailment but it seems magical in nature. I’m not sure where to even start. If the Archon was here...” But Dorian is not at the moment, halfway across Thedas in the Free Marshes meeting with dignitaries about the Inquisition. Felix tries to call him with the message crystal but there is no answer - whatever he is doing Dorian must not be wearing it.

“My aunt, Maevaris Tilani. Go and get her.” Fenera mumbles something as the healer scurries away. “What?”

“It was the Inquisitor. They were-they came after us. They found us and I tried...my mother told us to run and I-” She drops her head, sobbing. “They took him, my brother. I couldn’t save him. They knew how to dismantle my cloaking spell. It...I’m half here and half in the Fade, that’s how it works. Can’t find me when I’m not in either place but whatever they did is trying to pull me apart into nothing. I can’t, I’m so tired, I-Fuck!”

“Fenera!” The whole right side of her body vanishes this time and she lets out a scream that cuts through his heart. The revallas burn bright like a flash of lightning, arcs of power jumping from her body and bringing her back from wherever the Inquisitor’s attack is taking her. She’s turning pale, the lines on her body even fainter now, and panic grows larger inside him. “What can I do? Fen, what can I do?”

She leans into him, cowering against his chest. “Don’t let me go.”

He does his best not to, fingers skimming over her arms and shoulders, down her back, like touching her as much as he can might keep her here. She smells like ozone and cinders, body burning, buzzing with electricity, and he doesn’t understand what’s happening but he understands he is losing her as her body continues to waver like the air above stones on a hot day.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean any of it. I was trying to protect you, to protect me. Me. I didn’t want, I shouldn’t...I’m sorry.”

He has forgotten what she would beg forgiveness for. What happened is a distance thing in his memory, pushed away as soon as he sees her like this, as soon as he hears his name through her lips again. “It’s okay, it doesn’t matter.”

“It does. I should have told you, that I...” She grips to his collar and looks up, gaze glistening and glowing, and he knows what she would say. He can see it clearly, see it reflecting back inside himself when he dares to look. The rush of the truth rises through his veins with how much he wants to hear it, but not now, not when it will only sound like a goodbye.

Fingers smooth through her hair crackling with static as he holds her closer and tries to seal away this moment, save it for another time instead of burying it in a tomb. “Just stay.”

She takes a deep breath, then another, and every one after he takes as a blessing. What little healing magic he knows he wraps around her in hopes it will help. He’s not sure if it does, or if the Inquisitor’s spell simply wears away, but eventually she becomes solid again, skin staying still instead of shivering. She is whole, alive, albeit exhausted with revallas completely gone with the need for more power and eyes unable to focus or stay open for long. When he tries to speak with her she can only mumble quietly, words slurring together so he can’t understand.

As he and a guard help her into the palace to his rooms when the healer deems her safe to move, Maevaris finally arrives with a satchel of spells and potions. She frets over Fenera as they place her in his bed, hands glowing with healing or pulling the stoppers from bottles to boost the effects. He stands at the edge of the room wanting to help but not wanting to be in the way, foot tapping with nervous energy. Not until his aunt pronounces that Fenera’s heart beats steadily once more does he relax somewhat.

“I think she’ll be fine. Lots of rest and all that,” Mae says. “You said the Inquisitor did this?”

“Yes. I don’t know why they would go after her.”

“Hmm.” He’s glad she doesn’t pry much further, about why this woman is definitely not the Ferelden lass they’ve spoken about before. He doesn’t want to explain it now. The only question asked is one he doesn’t mind answering. “She does look awfully familiar though. What’s her name? I’ve forgotten if you mentioned it before.”

“It’s-”

“Felix?” comes a call from the bed, soft and drowsy.

“Thank you Aunt Mae. Really, thank you.” He puts a hand on her arm as he moves passed her. “And it’s Fenera. Her name’s Fenera.”

He misses the way eyes widen at this knowledge, attention already focused on the shape buried in sheets before he lets his touch fall away. If Maevaris lingers at the door he doesn’t take notice as he climbs into the bed and immediately has Fenera snuggling into his chest. “Stay,” she says this time, as if there was any chance he would be elsewhere right now.

“Sleep.” They do not speak further but he is reassured by her easy breaths as she drifts off to sleep, by her skin no longer burning but warm from the comfort around her. He notices things as he runs across her skin now that the revallas has faded - a small scar above her elbow, a large freckle on the underside of her arm, but he can still remember some of the places they curled and covered and follows their absent trail. There are new marks too from her recent experience such as a bruise blooming on her upper thigh and another on her forearm, a cut on her chest covered by a fresh bandage, drying blood flaking down to the bedsheets that he isn’t sure to whom it belongs.

When he’s sure she’s sound asleep he presses his lips to her forehead and dreams of whispering the words she almost said, wondering what they feel like breaking out of his heart and rolling from his tongue. He’s said it before, of course, to his fathers and aunts but this...this would be different. There’s a fresh warning in his mind blaring, reminding him of the decision he re-made not long ago that has been shredded like an unwanted contract in the wake of seeing her again, but he may have been too quick to react before. This isolation, this mistrust of the world, is a cloak around him, one that’s heavy and scratches but is all he has had for so long.

At first chance he shrugged it back on again without even thinking. Now he looks and hears, remembers the way her hands shake when she tells him this was nothing more than a casual affair, the way her eyes gleam in the light of the sea glass stairs like there is no where in the cosmos she wishes to be. He remembers her words from so long ago - _I also happen to come from a talented line of liars._ It doesn’t comfort him then, but it does now. He thinks, looking back on it all, that maybe she exaggerates her skills just a bit. He thinks, he knows, that he has been the one doing the pretending. She wakes again in the dark of night for a time, cotton mouthed and cranky, and he tends to her with an ease and gentleness that no longer surprises him, nor does the fondness inside as she grumbles and whines in her half bleary state. After something cool to drink and a warm cloth to pass over stained skin she falls back into the Fade, wrapping the sheets around her like a cocoon, and he hopes she emerges transformed back into something healed. 

He doesn’t remember eventually falling asleep himself but he must, for when he opens his eyes next there is early light at the horizon and a soft, golden gaze watching him. Her eyes are clear again like a morning free of clouds even if some fatigue still remains and he wakes completely at her smile and fingers grasping onto his arm. He only means to kiss her briefly, to welcome her back to the world of the whole and living, but as soon as he feels the current of electricity between them he cannot pull away so easily. It molds into something more, relief and frustrations unraveling, old careless conversations dropping away with every wordless one they share now. The almost desperate hold she has upon him only makes him draw closer, like he is a dream she would keep from disappearing or something steady and solid in a shifting place. He feels similar, wanting to make sure she stays, that she’s real, when everything in his life has been fleeting and falls away.

She giggles when he rolls her over onto her back and he realizes he’s letting the moment overrule his common sense but Maker has he missed this, missed _her._ “I’m-”

Fenera snatches the apology from him with another long kiss that soothes some of his worries and frazzles all his thoughts. “I enjoy your bedside manner.”

He rolls his eyes. “Fen. How do you feel?”

“Tired, sore.” She touches her now bare arm with shaking fingers. “Weird.”

“I can get you some poultices-”

He doesn’t get far before she grabs his arm and pulls him back. “No, just stay here. For a little bit more? I need…”

He witnesses the decay of her smile before she buries her head into his shoulder. With a shattered breath the realization of what she has endured returns to the mind, settles dark and quick over the room even as the day slowly grows brighter outside. Whatever easiness existed is gone as Fenera grips tight to the back of his shirt. “I...I killed someone. I didn’t have a choice, they were...I can still see their eyes, and the blood-”

She lets go of him suddenly and shoots up to sitting, wavering slightly as dizziness passes, but there is determined panic on her face. “I’m sorry,” he says while chasing after her. “That must have been horrible, but it’s all right now. The Inquisitor can’t get you here, you’re safe.”

“My mother. I don’t know what happened to her. She could be hurt, she could be-” Tears free themselves from the prison of her lashes and drip to the bed, voice turning hoarse as more bottle up in her throat. “And my brother is only fifteen. I have to find my family! I can’t stay, I have to-”

“Fenera, you can’t go after the Inquisitor. They’ll kill you for sure next time. You can’t go, not alone anyways.” She stops trying to escape his grasp at that, eyeing him with suspicion and hope alike. “Let me help you. Tell me what’s happening and why they’re after you. Is this why you lied to me before?”

She looks away. “I can’t tell you. You’ll hate me.”

“I won’t. Even if I did, don’t I deserve the truth?” He leans forward and captures her face in his hands, kisses the bridge of her nose, and the actions loosen a little cry from her lips. “Tell me, please.”

After a moment she nods and sighs, shoulders squaring back to brace against whatever will come. “Okay. I-that thing Honor calls me, Aryon’al Ilu Vistanel? It’s not really a nickname, it’s a title. It means heir to the world breakers. Ilu Vistan is what they call my mother now but she’s had a lot of names. Like...like In-”

A knock at the door interrupts her, the rasping barely finished before it opens without invitation. Felix’s annoyance disappears as his father strides into the room and is quickly replaced with unwanted embarrassment at their situation, but Dorian’s eyes don’t go to him. They’re pinned to Fenera and cycle through a torrent of seasons, surprise and confusion, recognition, a whisper of outrage. “Maker’s Breath and I didn’t believe it, yet here you are.”

“I can explain,” Felix begins.

“I should hope so. I should think the story of how Fenera Lavellan has ended up in my son’s bed is an interesting tale indeed.”

The bottom of the world drops out from underneath him, that feeling of failing a test that decides one’s fate. It is something beyond shock that claws into him and fills his veins with ice and fire as this disbelief is all too believable by the way she’s turned her reddened face away from him. “Fen?” 

“I didn’t want to tell you when we first met. Everyone in Elvhenan knows who I am. My name means the wolf’s dream, it’s pretty easy to figure out. You didn’t know who I was and I liked it. I thought it would be fun to play it out for a little bit. What could the harm be right?”

He slides away from her. “Fun? Fun for _you_ to toy with the son of Vaxus Trevelyan?”

“No! I didn’t know the whole truth until you told me. I only knew you were the Archon’s son and what everyone else knows about the Inquisition. That’s all. I swear it, I had no idea. And after we,” she pauses, eyes flicking to Dorian for a second, “after you told me I _couldn’t_ tell you. I was...Felix, I’m so sorry-”

She tries to reach for his hand but he springs from the bed like it is a snake in the grass. The hurt on her face because of it is an unfair thing and he finds there doesn’t seem to be any safe place to look now as his father gazes at him with pity too. _Lavellan._ No...no, this can’t be happening. Neither of them call for him as he turns and escapes from the room, legs only a push away from running. It’s too much, these last few weeks of turmoil mixing with this new knowledge like two storms colliding to throw him overboard. He needs to stay above this, needs room to think.

He finds it in the great expanse of the palace’s ballroom. It is empty save for sculptures and scalloped archways, the chandeliers glistening down from their long strings. His feet echo off the polished floors and each one wars with the fast beating of his heart. Fenera is the daughter of the Dread Wolf and the former Inquisitor. He is mad at her for keeping the truth locked away for so long, furious with himself for never asking the right questions to begin with. He has always avoided learning things about the Lavellan clan, as every time he sees or hears Keela or Fen’Harel’s name he is awash in anger, but now it seems foolish not to know things about your enemies.

Felix stops in the middle of the grand space with feet planted on the design of a sun bursting outwards to the far corners. His enemies. Is that what they are? Is that what _she_ is? How can he reconcile long lasting hatred with this fledgling love trying to take wing inside? And he does, he loves her, a revelation that he is no longer afraid to admit despite everything, but there is too much weight. He can’t imagine ever being able to call them family, to be able to look at her without shadows obscuring all that is good. What future could they ever have tangled up in the chains of the past? It is impossible, isn’t it, the idea of breaking loose to create something new? He thinks about his father’s recent acceptance of his training, of who he wants to be, and the changes between them it has already created. The changes she set in motion. Could they…maybe-

Boots clicking loudly behind him disrupt his thoughts. He wonders which one of them has finally come for him, wonders which one he really wants to see in this moment. There is no need to fret about it all as he turns and finds strangers approaching, although a new worry washes over him to see golden masks covering faces and a flaming eye upon chests. The Inquisition. The Inquisition is here. He knows they have not been admitted willingly as red drips on the floor from tested weapons, but it is the one held by the center soldier that makes his blood run cold. It is his papa’s great sword, gleaming free of filth or marks but still horrifying to see clasped in a large hand that isn’t his.

A barrier crackling with fury forms around Felix, flames blue and white hot from his emotions building in fists. He won’t let them leave with that sword, won’t let them leave with her either. It can be the only reason they are here  so why come to him? Alarms begin to ring throughout the palace and the sound of distant shouting mixes in. Whatever their reason, there won’t be much time for it. He only has to stall until the others come. “You have no right to that.”

The warrior tilts their head, considering him with hidden eyes, and yet he feels exposed, measured. There is something familiar about them but he doesn’t have time to dwell on it as they make a gesture and two Inquisition agents move forward. Dueling with Fenera has prepared him for combating steel and spells at the same time and he slips into that place found in the heart of the training room, the one made of cause and reaction, flight and fight. He allows himself a second a pride as he disarms one of them with a quick move and makes the other take a step back to reassess. If they thought he would make this easy for them, if they thought they could escape from this place unharmed, he is glad he is not the only foolish one for the day.

“Felix.”

It’s not his father’s voice, not Mae’s or Fenera’s. It’s not anyone he should know but it makes him stop in his tracks, spells snapping out and limbs stalling, because he knows it somehow, in some way that splits him open like a wound that won’t heal. His moment of distraction is all that’s needed. An arm wraps around his throat as a cloth soaked through with something cool and strong smelling covers his face. He tries to throw them off but every breath pulls him under the potions spell until everything becomes muted and hazy, the edges of his vision becoming black and fathomless. The last thing he sees is the hilt of Vaxus’ sword before darkness consumes him.


	18. The Same Places with Different Faces

Felix wakes slowly under the grip of whatever potion used against him. It holds him back, not in the comfort of soft sheets, but a thick mud that pulls and pulls the more he struggles. When it finally relents he surfaces to find himself locked within a room with bars made of pulsing light that cast an eerie, red glow crossing an open doorway. His limbs are unshackled yet sluggish, heavy as he tries to rise and get a better bearing on his situation. It doesn’t seem to be a cell but a broken and musty office or study of some sort, decayed wooden chairs and torn banners littered across the floor. He could be anywhere - in the cellars of some Tevinter villa, an abandoned hallway of a Ferelden fortress.

Felix isn’t sure how long it takes for him to manage sitting up straight in this place with no sun and mind clouded, but when he does, when he finally has enough sense to sense the world around him again, he realizes he is not alone. A figure sits against the far wall, the magical barrier casting them in shadows and glinting off shackles around their wrists and neck but doing little else to shed light on the rest of their features. He conjures a white flame, small at first like an ember, before it builds and builds as his strength continues to return. When it is large enough to sustain itself, the orb floats from his fingers and drifts towards the center of the room to illuminate the unknown.

Except it is things recognized that Felix finds when he looks. Black hair and yellow eyes, and for a second he thinks it is Fenera here with him in the dark and dangerous, but the light shifts and features familiar change into something different, someone different. Yet he knows who he shares this cell with. “You...you’re Keela Lavellan.”

She leans further forward and there can be no doubt as he catches sight of her false arm chained to her chest. “I am,” she replies and pauses, head tilting to the side with careful consideration, “and you are Felix Pavus.”

“How do you know that?”

“A better question would be why have they brought you here?”

He doesn’t know the reason, especially under the circumstances. If they had wanted his help, as he once dreamed about, why would they bring him against his will and not simply ask? Is it as his father fears and the Inquisition plans to enact judgement on all those who helped in the Veil’s destruction?

All thoughts are minor things to the one screaming in front of him. Finally he is face to face with Keela Lavellan...and he cannot find anything to say. All the speeches and promises he’s made to the ceiling of his room over the years drift away like dust, like he is unable to collect all the pieces into something coherent. There is more than twenty years to sift through and he should have known it would never be an easy task. Despite everything there has always been a small part of him that never expected this moment to come and she may appear small and weakened now, but she is still a living legend torn from history books.

His thoughts are interrupted when Keela lets out a low hiss of discomfort and claws at the metal around her neck. Some bright substance slashes through it, moving like liquid trapped beneath glass. He has never seen anything like it and his curiosity must be plain to see for she answers his silent query. “The metal is called Asca’elgar. It cuts off one’s connection to the Fade until removed. It is…extremely annoying.”

They didn’t see fit to shackle him. He doubts he could ever be a greater threat to the Inquisition than Lavellan, but it still feels strange, like it is a small curtesy in this cage instead of an insult. They couldn’t have completely known about his desire to meet her and declare transgressions either, but they have placed them together when he can see doors and other rooms across the hall.

“Were you the only one captured?” she asks, oblivious to his troubles or apathetic to them. “Is Dorian here? Where did they attack you?”

“They came to the palace. I don’t know about my father. We weren’t together.” He doesn’t know why he feels compelled to reveal the next part but regrets it by the way her eyes turn sharp upon him. “They have, uh, Aneirin. Fenera escaped though. She was hurt but she’s all right now.”

“How do you know this?”

“I...” He feels his cheeks heat. Among all the imagined conversations, this was definitely never one he thought to ever practice. “I’ve met Fenera. I mean I know her. She...we, we’re uh...friends.”

Keela lifts a brow and his discomfort grows. “Friends? You are ‘friends’ with my daughter? Does Dorian know this?”

“He does now, yes.” She gives a little laughs of disbelief before dropping back against the wall and he understands her feelings well enough. There is one thing he would like to understand, one question that is linked to so many others, and he finds the courage to ask it. “Why didn’t you tell her the truth?”

She takes a time to answer, eyes gazing down at her hand made of flesh. There is a softness to her, a sadness that surprises and confuses him. She has been nothing but a monolith within his imagination, a single point to where all his pain connects. The moment passes, however, and when Keela glances up at him again her eyes are hard like stone. “It is of little importance right now. I know that I am not your friend, but you cannot trust this Inquisitor. They want more than my head and have yet to play their true card. I do not know what they want, but I know where they have brought us. It’s-”

The red bars of their prison flash before disappearing altogether and four soldiers appear in the hallway beyond. Felix sits still as half of them move inside and unchain Keela from the floor. She doesn’t resist as they drag her up to standing but her face reminds him of proud statues of kings and queens set out around the palace, like these people are servants taking their master somewhere instead of taking her against her will.

Another one of them approaches Felix with cuffs dangling from their hands. “You are to come as well, unfettered, unless you make trouble. Will there be trouble, Lord Pavus?”

Keela gives a little shake of her head when he looks in her direction and he understands that this is not the place or the time for defiance or to make a move against them, although he is not sure that is what he truly wants in the end. They are all his enemy - he just isn’t sure which is the worst of them. “N-no, no trouble.”

“Good, come with us.”

Their destination is a wide open room, doors and half the ceiling rotted away with curtains of flowers and ivy like waterfalls pouring from above. Dappled sunlight illuminates sections of the massive space while the rest is cast in twilight colors of dull grey or deep shadow. Towards the center of the space a makeshift platform of wood and crumbling stone stands with someone standing upon it. When Keela notes who is tied to its surface she lets out a wretched noise, an angry snarl and a desperate cry mixed together, and yanks forward against the chains binding her.

“What are you doing to my son?” she demands. Aneirin is ashen, sagging and still with red seeping from his veins into bowls burning with emerald fire, and Felix feels sick at the sight.

The Inquisitor appears from around the platform but Felix’s eyes go to the large warrior behind them, the one that took him from the palace - the one that spoke his name with the weight of something strangely familiar, like a favorite book belonging to someone else.

“He is helping me achieve glory, as will you,” the Inquisitor says and glances up at their creation. “I would have preferred the blood of Fen’Harel. So much power in those veins. Your son will do just as well, but I’m afraid there will be little left from fueling my spell.”

“No! Take mine.”

“I will, but the blood of a powerful somniari is needed. They are the only ones who can reach back and grasp what has passed. I have almost all that is required save for one final ingredient.”

The Inquisitor motions for the soldier at their side and they step forward across the hall. Halfway there they reach behind and pull a sword from their back - his papa’s sword, clean and shining in the dappled light, and whatever fear Felix feels is momentarily forgotten to see it in the hands of another. It isn’t right and he wants to call fire down into his fists to see it removed from this stranger’s grasp. He finds he doesn’t have to do anything at all, however, as when they are only a few feet away they place the sword across both palms and offer it to him.

“Take it,” the Inquisitor commands and he is too stunned to do anything else but listen, the heavy weight almost dropping from his hands. Entulesfaile is there beside their henchman, and although the mask still covers their face Felix knows there is a smug smile stretching there. They point to Keela. “Take it and enact justice for Thedas, for your family.”

“What? No, I…”

“It’s what you’ve always wanted, is it not? I know you have dreamed of this death, of taking her life in payment of his. Crawling from your bed and standing before this sword vowing that you would make her pay. If not for her your papa never would have left you. You would be whole.”

Whispers echo in his ears as a wave of pressure washes over him. When he blinks everything around changes, the unknown corners of this place becoming walls and windows half remembered now. It is their old house by the sea, his room with the little loft he likes to crawl into and read books beneath the cover of a blanket until his papa plucks him down and places him in bed. It is not his papa that walks through the door now but Dorian, feet shuffling, dragging grief in with him that Felix can barely understand. He doesn’t understand why Vaxus will never return, loss a thing for toys broken and ships made of bark and leaves sent sailing down the stream, but there are tears in his father’s eyes that scare him and so he cries too.

It is cold in the crypt of House Pavus, a cold felt in the marrow that can’t be warmed away by layers, and Felix shivers as they bury his papa. There is no body inside the sarcophagus and he is glad. He doesn’t like the idea of Vaxus trapped in there forever, alone in the deep dark, and as long as he isn’t inside there is the possibility he isn’t really gone. Maybe one day he’ll walk through the doors with a smile and a laugh and an explanation that doesn’t matter. Dorian holds on too tight to his hand as Divine Victoria speaks in somber tones, and Felix holds onto the wish until the story grows stale and he replaces it with hundreds of others, ones where the day is saved and the hero always returns home.

The vision fades into another one, of peering through a crack in the door to watch Dorian and Aunt Mae leaning close together at the kitchen table, a wine glass gripped desperately in his father’s hand. Felix doesn’t like the brokenness seen in grey eyes, the bitter curl of stained lips. It settles in his stomach like a rock. “This is what you get hoping for more. I always knew it. I knew that bastard would break my heart.”

“Dorian-”

“And to leave me with Felix. How am I to manage it alone?”

Mae consoles him further, but Felix hardly hears any of it as his face heats and his heart beats in his ears. His young mind makes fantasies of his father hating him, shouldering him like a burden he’d rather leave behind. He returns to his room and thinks of running away and ends up hiding away sobbing into little hands making promises to be good and quiet, to make Dorian happy so he doesn’t leave too. It stays with him, this need to please, even when he is old enough to know that wine and loss loosen the worst worries and his father loves him without pause, but there are things that are never meant to be heard, things that can never be forgotten.

Felix feels as if his whole life is defined by these moments, like he can see the connections making a constellation of who he is, and the image is something that makes him burn with frustration and defeat. There is no hiding from what he has become, no way to dig inside his ears and unhear his father’s words or the pathetic cries of a boy raised by grief. The chance for more is written just out of grasp, lost in the emptiness of loss, and he hasn’t comprehended just how adrift he’s been for so long until now.

He hears the Inquisitor’s voice in his mind. “She is always willing to pay the price in the blood of others, but never her own. Your papa’s life is something she would sacrifice over and over again to reach her goals. Did he deserve such an end?”

The next memory is not his own and yet he can recognize the moment and tries to fly free, to release himself from what he is witnessing. The Inquisitor’s magic holds him hostage, however, and makes him watch history unraveling as Vaxus struggles to find breath in a prison of light and poison. Felix feels it in his own lungs, choking and damning, but it is the pale, pained expression on his papa’s face that drags him down and down. He doesn’t want to be here, to see the fear in bright eyes, to watch them close as final words slip away and a message crystal falls from grasp. He watches, unable to shut his eyes or scream or do anything, as Vaxus dies in the dark, alone. As his family shreds to pieces as the world is finally made whole again.

The ancient hall bleeds back into focus, but Felix’s stays with all the memories, with Vax’s last breath, and he feels stretched and frayed, a chord strummed by angry fingers. Rage resonates through him, builds in his eyes hot and scorching, the kind made blind by despair that lashes out at friend or foe, and there are no friends here. It is made all the stronger by the fact that Keela pays him no mind in this moment as if his suffering is nothing to her. The logical part of his brain knows she’s still straining towards her son, desperate to save him, but he is too overcome by his own loss to care.

“Do you know where we are?” The Inquisitor continues. “This is the place that it was done. This is the place that she let your papa die. _Vir’uthan_ , the place of endless paths, but the end for your future. “She does not deserve your mercy. She deserves your vengeance. I owe your family a debt, Felix Pavus. Spill her blood and I will see that she never has the opportunity to destroy it.”

The knowledge of where they are is the last cut against his resolve. Vaxus is somewhere in this rubble but gone from this world, and it is all her fault. Felix levels the Trevelyan sword against her neck and at the cool touch of its edge she finally turns her head to face him. “You let him die!”

“Yes.” She returns his gaze without hesitation yet there is remorse in her eyes, the echoes of a hundred choices he could never comprehend seeping through the veins of amber. She doesn’t carry them proudly but they are there all the same, a part of her not denied or forgotten. It is something else found that breaks through the fog of wrath the Inquisitor has thrown him into, something he can recognize easily for the home it has made in his heart - grief, etched into her just as it is in him. He has always wanted her to suffer even a small part of the pain he feels and now he realizes she always has. It is why she didn’t tell Fenera, why she couldn’t. Felix hasn’t been the only one haunted by ghosts.

“No.” He drops his arm and the sword tip pings against the floor shaking loose the last of the Inquisitor’s influence. His heart is pounding heavily and he tries to catch his breath like they’ve just finished a long day of training. Maker but he, he almost...

Entulesfaile clicks their tongue. “A shame, but ultimately irrelevant. It is not her blood needed to complete the spell but my own. I only wanted the satisfaction of seeing it spilled before I go. I doubt we shall ever truly meet again, since it shall be I that rises from the chaos instead while you burn away with all the others.”

“You plan to return to the Conclave explosion?” Lavellan does not counter the impossibility of the act - they have both spent enough time in Dorian’s company to know the theories.

“I want a broken world against this one, a world easily controlled where I will be the only one reaping its full potential.”

“Who are you?”

“Stop looking with your eyes, da’len. You know who I am.”

There’s a strange pulse in the Fade, something that makes the hair on Felix’s body rise, makes his skin prickle like he has been swept up in a treacherous, foul wind. He doesn’t understand it but Keela seems to by the way her gaze widens and his stomach drops with the level of fear found in it. “No.”

The Inquisitor reaches up and pulls away their cowl and mask to finally reveal who is beneath. Felix doesn’t recognize their face, full of long lines and sharp expressions, and he thinks they might have been beautiful once if not for the thick scar that runs down one side all the way into their collar. They reach down with a smirk that’s distorted by the old wound and grasp Keela’s chin like she truly is a child.  

“I should thank you. You rid the world of a pestilence when I could not accomplish the same, but you are too small, too mortal, to take the throne they left unoccupied. I will rise from your and Fen’Harel’s failures.” Their eyes find Felix and he feels small, a speck adrift in the universe. “We are being rude. Tell him who I am, little pretender.”

Keela yanks herself out of his grasp at that, the fear morphing into something defiant. The Inquisitor laughs. “Ilu Vistan they call you now. World breaker. If I find you in the past it will be you who shall be broken. I have had many names as well, although I will always prefer Falon’Din.”

Felix feels like he’s in a dream. This can’t be real. He can’t be here with Keela Lavellan, in the place where the Veil was sundered, where gods and family perished. Where the last of the Evanuris stands and measures him with fathomless eyes older than he can comprehend. His mouth opens but nothing comes out, limbs shake but do not move as the air grows thicker and heavier with magic vast and unknown.

Keela is less affected by their presence as she meets their gaze even from her knees and Felix tries to take strength in her resilience. “This isn’t possible. I killed you.”

“I am the greatest Necromancer that has ever lived, da’len. Did you think I would fall so easily to something so fleeting as death? I gave them secrets towards immortality, but I did not give them all. Not after I was struck down and chained by their will. I will make sure that they, that no one, will take what should be mine again. Ilu Heru they will call me, the ruler of the world and beyond.”

Something pops and ripples through the air. A portal of swirling, excited light forms on the platform in front of Aneirin, the eye of it dark as night. “Ah, it is time. Kill her now. Fen’Harel draws near and I would leave him a final gift before I go.” The Inquisitor drops their hand on the looming soldier’s shoulder. “Enact your own revenge, my friend.”

They move to take back the sword in Felix’s hand and he steps back into a ready position to level the weapon at their chest. It is foolish for all the good it will likely do, surrounded by agents and someone who makes even the former Inquisitor tremble, but he would rather perish than see Vaxus’ sword spoiled in someone else’s hands ever again. He was right to reject the Inquisitor’s offer for they want to undo what his papa worked so hard to achieve, what he died for. Felix won’t let his sacrifice be in vain without a fight of his own.

Entulesfaile looks back and scoffs. “You will accomplish nothing on your own.”

“I’d say it’s a good thing he isn’t alone then,” a voice calls out from above before the air explodes with magic.

 

  


  


 

 art by trashwarden

* * *

 

There are millions of people in this world, thousands in the magisterium and college, what seems like hundreds of eligible bachelorettes Dorian has presented over the years in hopes one might finally tickle his fancy, and somehow, despite it all, Felix has managed to tangle himself with the daughter of Keela Lavellan. He would laugh, if not for the horrified look on his son’s face right now.

It is clear the truth was something unknown until this moment for Felix isn’t that good of a liar, and Dorian is no longer swept up in his own delusions to not notice the signs. He listens without comment as Fenera explains how this has all came to be. The ironies grow larger until he can’t help but shake his head at the fortunes of their houses. It is difficult to tell if he is shocked still or if his life has simply prepared him for this moment, what with thwarted blood magic rituals, breaches in the sky, _breaching_ that very same sky on purpose, a war that saw him crowned. Finding love and wanting to keep it. It is more of a surprise that it has taken their paths this long to collide again, and he’s not exactly sure how he should feel about it, how he does feel about it.

There is no surprise when Felix leaves the room in a storm of agitated silence. He’ll need time to sort through everything, a place to frown at for a while. A memory washes over Dorian, of Felix spending what seemed like days deciding what Wintersend gifts to ask for, with balled up lists neatly placed in the trash, little brow wrinkled in thought, before presenting a final one with solemn sincerity.

He is left to consider the anomaly in the room. Too little is known about Fenera to guess at her true intentions and he tries to fill in the gaps with things he does know. Is she as insufferable as that dimple on her chin would suggest, stubborn by the gold light of her eyes? It’s like glancing at the pages of a history book and his head fills with quests and castles, quiet days and long battles. He can almost smell the dust and leather of the library again and feel the sun kissing his neck as it peers through the window, can almost hear ravens and the tread of boots on the stairs that make his heart thump.

Dorian clears his throat, clears his mind with a forceful sweep. “Quite a mess, wouldn’t you say?”

Fenera gives him a shrug. “Just keeping family tradition alive.”

“They truly told you nothing? From Solas I could expect nothing less, but your mother-”

Fenera tilts her chin up, sniffs her tears back, and by the seven hells he’s seen this look a hundred times. “At least my parents didn’t raise me to foster hate against someone for something they couldn’t control. Felix looked me in the face and told me he wanted my mother to _suffer_.”

Dorian cringes at that, caught. There is truth in her words, a thousand conversations and memories he avoids over the years, for resentment and rage are easier things to carry than the weight of grief and loss. “Yes, well, mistakes made all around. Parenting isn’t easy I’ll have you know.”

“Yes, well, you didn’t do too bad all things considered,” she replies and the seriousness of her features shifts into a friendly smirk he is a little helpless to resist in returning.

“Where is your family now?”

Her amusement slips and falls. “I don’t know. Pae and Taliesin went together and were supposed to contact us by now. The Inquisition has Aneirin, and Mamae…”

“I’m sure she yet lives,” Dorian says after a moment. “That blighted fool wearing her symbol wouldn’t let her die with so little fanfare.”

“Is that your idea of being comforting? Might want to work on it.”

“Noted.” Fenera stands and retrieves her armor, snapping it on with hands that shake slightly. “Where are you going?”

“I have to find my mother, save my brother. I have to do something.”

He doesn’t bother arguing that it is likely a foolish endeavor carried out all by her lonesome for he has long given up on convincing anyone with her blood of changing their course without some sort of back up of his own, but he has one ace up his sleeve. ”And what of Felix?”

Fingers pause, leather creaking as they curl. “Felix…”

Dorian feels vibrations along the web of spells he’s weaved all over the palace a moment before alarms ring loud through the air. They both tense and glance at once another, one thought and concern rushing forward and through their lips. “Felix.”

Guards press in close when they leave the room and venture into the palace proper. They meet with their first signs of discord off the main atrium where Captain Aedelicus barks orders and stands close to a puddle of red. “Inquisition agents, Your Majesty. No one reported them entering the grounds, but they’ve been confronted in the right wing so far. Four of our guards are dead, two servants. Found only two of theirs.”

“And Felix?”

“Headed east with a quad of guards. I’ve sent more to secure him.”

East, where the infiltrators have been spotted. With a quick thought, Dorian can confirm his wards along the walls and perimeters are intact and checks along the broken ones inside the palace to find they match Aedelicus’ words. He can’t tell how many there are, or if Felix is among them. “They have also tripped my spells within the ballroom. How did they manage this?”

“If I can find my way through all the time so could someone else,” Fenera says.

“And is that your idea of comforting?” he shoots back, worrying making his voice louder.

“Better question might be if they could get around them, did they set these ones off on purpose?” Aedelicus says. “Had we not caught them no one would know they were here but you.”

Felix would know as well. A trap then, to lure them out? What is it that the Inquisition wants from him? Whatever it is they are willing to spill blood for it and his son is out there in the midst of it all. Dorian turns his feet towards the ballroom, the last string pulled in his web. “Follow me.”

Tension coils inside him, growing tighter with every step they take across the palace. They see no one on their way there, no staff or guards or enemy, and the fact doesn’t put him at ease. Felix will be all right. To think of any alternative is unacceptable, but his resolve doesn’t stop doubts from creeping into his thoughts, or memories from pricking into his heart. That old, familiar feeling of panic rises up his throat, makes him feel like he’s stumbling off balance.

“There!” Fenera shouts before they reach their destination and points a dagger down a hallway nearby. Figures in dark clothes move on swift feet away from them and his eyes are drawn to one in particular - the massive soldier who accompanied the Inquisitor the day Divine Constance made her decree. They glance back as they mean to round the next corner, but Dorian has no mind for them, not when Felix hangs limp over their shoulder.

There is shouting afterwards, from Aedelicus and Inquisition men, most likely from him as well, but it is most assuredly his magic that storms down from the heavens and crackles throughout the hallway. Many of the enemy remain behind to waylay them and he wants to scream as spells and swords clash. It has been a long time since he has been embroiled in combat although at first the Captain and his guards do everything they can to keep him from it. There is no time for protocol or stations, however - already Felix is out of sight, and he can’t let them get much further away without losing him altogether.

When an Inquisition agent steps in his path he lashes out with the end of his staff, feels the shock of impact ripple down his arms in waves he never thought to feel again. He remembers it all like a half forgotten song that fills his mouth with every flash of sparks from his fingers and every twist of wood in his hand. Violence stirs within his breast and he lets it guide his feet and spells, lets it wash over him as it did all those years ago when there were other demons to face.

“Hey!” Fenera grasps at his attention through the haze of battle as she presses close to his side for a moment. “When I say, push them towards me.”

“What-”

She is gone before he can speak anymore and he loses sight of her in the throng to blurred shapes, quick steel and dazzling spells. Fenera reappears across enemy lines flashing with violet static. “Now!”

Dorian brings his staff down and unleashes a torrent of terrors at the soldiers in front of him. They scream at the horrors pouring into their minds and stumble backwards right into glyphs that burst up from the floor in pulsing lines of electric power. Limbs shake and weapons fall from fingers before bodies join them on the ground. It is a clever strategy, one he has used before across the sands of the Hissing Waste or trees of the Emerald Graves with another not quite so different elf.

He steps over the prone figures to reach her. “Well done.”

With Aedelicus close behind they resume their chase. “I know right?” she says, a little breathless and a little frazzled, but she keeps pace regardless. “I could do this all day.”

His stride breaks at that, as a pang of nostalgia and disbelief strikes through him. Did the universe wake up this morning with the intent on driving him towards insanity? He half expects Varric to round the corner next offering up a game of Wicked Grace, or perhaps for one of Leliana’s bird to berate his eardrums, but there is nothing to be found when they continue down the corridor and break out into the palace grounds. Nothing, and no one.

“Where are they?” No treads upon the grass or branch broken give away the path taken, no cobwebs of Dorian’s magic severed and drifting in the Fade. True dread claws at him now, mixed with a futility that he has felt before as the magic of the message crystal went cold in his palm. Whichever direction he chooses may be the wrong one, but he can’t stand here while his son is taken from him.

“I’ll order men towards each exit,” Aedelicus announces and signals for their entourage to split apart. “Send up a beacon when you find them. Do not let Lord Pavus be taken from this palace.”

“I would have a word with one of our new friends,” Dorian says and turns back into the palace. There is some blood and scorch marks marring the once sparkling hallway, guards kicking broken cabinets or some slumped against the wall wearing grimaces and new bandages.

“There’s one over here,” a soldier answers when he asks to speak with an enemy agent. “Those that lived we’ve taken to the dungeons or medical. A few got away.”

They are led to an elf sitting surrounding by guards, his hands cuffed together and lip split apart. “Where were you taking my son?” Dorian demands.

“Not getting much out of him, Your Majesty. Refuses to speak Common, although he’s got plenty to say in Elvhen,” someone says. “Waiting on a translator.”

Fenera steps passed Dorian. “Good thing you have me.” The Inquisition agent snarls something, spits red at her feet, and she gives a mocking gasp of shock. “How rude.”

She speaks to him further in Elvhen and Dorian can tell without understanding that they are getting nowhere by the acidic tone of their voice, the way their face is turning red and defiant. There is no time for this. He will not lose Felix too, no matter what must be done. Dorian reaches out and roughly pulls the prisoner towards him, magic curling around his arm like dark smoke. It climbs up his hand and across the elf’s lips and nose.

“Where is my son?” He doesn’t wait for an answer that he knows won’t come so easily. Instead, he directs his magic into their eyes. It doesn’t matter that they clamp their lids close and try to yank from his grasp - the power seeps into the cracks, seeps through skin and bone and spirit. Terrors of teeth and claws assault their mind first, monsters created from nightmares and pieces of reality. The agent stiffens, yells as hundreds of insects begin to crawl over their skin. “Where is he?”

Dorian pushes harder towards their deepest fears when they do not answer and straps them down onto a hard table, leather across their legs and arms and forehead. He conjures another monster, one who wears a torturer's coat and breathes rancid, one who knows all their worst thoughts spread out like tools upon a table. It isn’t long before they are screaming in earnest, with eyes forced open and rats clawing at their belly. It is all in their mind, but Dorian knows a mind is something that can break just as easily as bone, and he would break every single one if it will give him his son back.

“Where is he!”

The answer is whimpering mess, words he can’t understand for the tears and the tongue it’s spoken in, but it is apparently an answer worth hearing as Fenera grabs onto Dorian’s shoulder and gives a quick shake. “That’s it, I know where it is. Let him go!”

He returns to standing and watches the elf go limp as his touch and magic retreats, eyes rolling back and consciousness fading. He likely went too far but he can’t bring himself to care, not even under the scrutiny of Fenera and Aedelicus’ concerned and queasy gazes. “Well?”

“I’ll tell you but-”

“I am presently not in the mood for negotiations. Tell me or-”

“Or what? You’ll turn me into a blubbering blob too?” She gestures to the prone figure on the floor and he forces himself to take a breath and calm down, to dissipate the last wisps of dark magic around his fingertips. “If I tell you I get to come with you. My mother and brother are probably there too.”

Dorian snorts. “As if I would waste my breath trying to convince you otherwise. Out with it already.”

There is a pause, not for theatrics but to prepare, and he doesn’t appreciate what that could mean. “They’re taking him to Vir’uthan.”

“This is an act of war against Tevinter,” Aedelicus says. “We should call the Magisterium together, raise the army-”

Fenera shakes her head, her gaze still watching for Dorian’s reaction. “No, there won’t be time. They said Felix would be taken to witness the Inquisitor’s greatness. It sounded like they’re performing a ritual. We need to go now.”  

 _Vir’uthan_. Dorian is still stuck upon that one word, stuck in a place decades ago that he has never fully left. Why there? “Your Majesty?” Aedelicus calls to him. “What is your will?”

“We will go without delay.” He tries not to think about their destination as he sends for Maevaris and buckles armor over his robes. At Fenera’s insistence, they race towards the eluvian in the middle of the city and meet her there. There are no questions or demands from his friend and a thousand words of gratitude and worry build up in his throat when he sees her waiting for them, hard silver over her clothes and in her eyes. All he manages to offer, however, is a nod, but by the small smile she gives him there is no need for more.

“How are we to pass through? The network has been closed,” Aedelicus says. He stands with a pair of soldiers, the three of them making up the last of their group. Dorian knows from experience the work only a handful of individuals can do and can only hope it will be enough.

“It isn’t closed to me,” Fenera says as she steps forward and places her hand on the hardened glass. A phrase is whispered, too soft and foreign to understand, but the magic artifact hears her loud and clear. A wave washes over the device from top to bottom before the whole thing becomes alight with power once more. “Come on.”

Dorian doesn’t pay attention to the paths they take in the Crossroads nor the people they meet along the way. There are Elvhen guards posted in several locations, weapons crossed and faces hardened until Fenera’s words opens them as well. In the back of his mind he parcels this knowledge away for the Crossroads were something Solas vowed to relinquish his hold upon, but for now the old ways seem to be assisting them. His thoughts are solely for his son, what he will need to do to bring him home, what he will do if he is too late.

“It’s through this next one,” Fenera announces as they come across a great eluvian, frame black and curling with broken statues surrounding it. He can’t tell what they are anymore, but he knows. He knows where this leads even if he has never set foot beyond into its depths. Dorian takes a breath as every fiber of his body wants to flee from what it will face. His life has been one battle after the next, however, one type of fear replacing the other - fear of disappointing others, of becoming something he isn’t, of believing in things only meant to be lost. He never let fear stop him before.

“The Inquisitor shouldn’t have been able to break through,” she continues. “My father locked Vir’uthan away tight.”

“You’ve been there, I presume?” Dorian asks and she nods. “What was it you said at the palace - if you could get in so could they?”

She makes a noise. “Just stay close to each other. There’s a reason it’s been closed, it’s weird.”

As their guide opens up this last eluvian he is quick to follow her through into Vir’uthan. The once proud fortress is little more than rubble now, its center courtyard a hole in the ground covered in black glass from the massive, terrible power that was unleashed here. The air does feel strange - it harkens him back to that fateful trip through the Fade and into the Nightmare’s realm, but it is not quite Fade and not quite Thedas. There’s a green sheen to the sky above them, whispers of voices he can’t quite catch. He wonders how much of the maze like structure below the ground survives intact, or if the whole of June’s wicked traps and changing corridors have fallen into the river of lava running below. He wonders where in this wretched monument is the exact place his family was destroyed.

 _Vir’uthan_. It is here where the Veil was split open for good, where mortals and gods battled and the last of the Evanuris fell. It is here where Vaxus died and where he remains still, bones buried somewhere deep beneath rubble.

Maevaris moves to his side, fingers brushing against his coat in a touch that seems accidental, but he feels the meaning in it. “Dorian…”

“I’m fine, never better.” He is not, and they both know it. He wants to tear off and claw through the ground, to rage at the sky and be lost within its fog. He just wants to find Felix and forget everything else.

“Do you think the Inquisitor’s ritual has something to do with the Veil?” she asks, pushing them both forward from the muck of memory. “The echoes of transformative magic still linger strongly here. The possibilities could be endless.”

“I suggest we do not give them a chance at completing their plans, whatever they might be.”

“I think they’re this way,” Fenera says up ahead. “There’s really only one place that’s standing above ground. I don’t think they’d be in the tunnels below. June’s traps are still active and there’s too many cave-ins.”

“Lead the way then.”

The first signs of sentries let them know they’ve chosen the right path. Dorian sends Aedelicus’ soldiers and Mae forward to deal with the two agents guarding the broken doors ahead while Fenera leads him and the captain around the side. Fallen stone and pillars have created a way up towards the empty windows of the second floor that they take with careful and silent feet. They climb over debris and peer through rust and vines down into a wide, open space. Half of the walls are gone or covered in moss, statues worn and a throne down upon its side on the far end.

Dorian sees all this in a flash before his attention is rapt upon the figures below them. There is much to see - a person strapped to a rickety platform, the Inquisitor’s unmasked face finally revealed, the shining shackles around Keela’s throat and hands. Dorian keeps his gaze on Felix most of all, relieved to find him rumpled yet alive and well, with Vaxus’ sword of all things held in a white knuckled grip.

“Ani!” Fenera almost launches herself into the air and into everyone’s sight if not for his hand around her arm pulling her back. It is a miracle none below have heard her and he thanks whatever deity for this one instance of luck in his life.

“Are you mad? Be quiet and still.”

“My brother, look!” The boy in the podium doesn’t move behind the portal and the thick, red pools beneath him do not bode well. “I have to help him!”

“Hold still for a moment or you’ll get us all killed.” There is a flash of movement towards the other side of the hall and he spots Maevaris and the others creeping closer. He wants to order them all to grab Felix and leave this place behind, but there will be success in that act. “Mae will take care of your brother. Aedelicus, give them the signal. We need to free Keela from those chains as well. One of the guards must have the key.”

“I can get it without them even seeing,” Fenera says. “The Inquisitor, though, they know about my cloaking spell-”

“Well, you’ll need a distraction then. I happen to be very good at them. Aedelicus, get my son away from this place as soon as you can.”

“You know he’ll want to fight,” Fenera mentions and he feels like grinding his teeth down to dust.

“Do not even give him a chance, Captain. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Sire.”

“But-”

He is saved from any further discussion from Fenera as the air explodes and a portal forms atop the wooden structure in the middle of the room. Familiarity presses in the back of Dorian’s mind at the sight of it, but he can’t quite place where he has seen something similar before. There is little time to think about it as the Inquisitor gives order for Keela’s execution and everyone below begins to react like they’ve been pulled by strings.

“Now or never. Get moving.”

Fenera doesn’t argue and instead disappears, a shiver of air the only sign of her passing. Dorian looks down to find his son holding high the Trevelyan sword, its sharp end pointed at the Inquisitor’s brutish henchman as they approach. Defiance and bravery set across Felix’s body, and he allows himself a moment of pride amongst the chaos and nerves. His son is no longer a child, a truth that might have saved them from all this had he only been willing to admit it to himself.

“You will accomplish nothing on your own,” the Inquisitor says from below.

Dorian takes a deep breath and pulls the Fade around him, bright and crackling with as much power as he can grab. “I’d say it’s a good thing he isn’t alone then,” he says as he falls from the second floor and brings wrath and ruin down with him.


	19. Of Things That Won’t Die Easily and Things That Do

Felix recognizes the person that drops from the floor above, but for a moment he cannot believe his eyes as Dorian pushes back the enemy before them in a thunder of static and flame. Captain Aedelicus appears as well brandishing a sword and spells of his own. Inquisition agents around them fall fast, barely seeing the steel or thread of magic that cuts them from this world as the Archon’s fire splits the room in two. Felix sees the Inquisitor’s- sees a god’s eyes narrow in anger before the inferno becomes too high to see beyond.

“Father! But how-”

Dorian grips his shoulder tightly, eyes speaking too many things to catch. “No time for explanations I’m afraid. Go with Aedelicus.”

“Come, Master Pavus.”

Felix shrugs off the captain’s hand on his arm. “No, I’m staying. You’ll need my help.”

“Felix-”

“I can do it.” He stands his ground against his father’s unrelenting gaze. “There’s no time for this either. We have to stop them before they get through the portal. We can’t let them go back!”

“What do you mean, go back?”

“To before the Conclave, to take the orb for their own,” Keela answers and for the first time in a long time his father locks eyes with his former friend. It’s not hard to guess at the emotions passing across both their faces, shock and guilt and discomfort they wish needn’t exist. Felix sees it all in a flash before they’re able to focus on the present problems again. “Dorian, they…it’s Falon’Din. They’re  _Falon’Din_.”

Eyes widen. “They survived?”

“I don’t know how. They were gone, I swear it.”

“Well, the Evanuris don’t die easily. I do believe that’s what you once said.” His father is taking this much better than Felix expected or did himself. He wants to know what he’s thinking, if this is just another monumental quest in a long line of them or if he feels the same nagging thought Felix has -  _Was it all worth it_? Whatever his thoughts, however, Dorian holds out his arm to Keela in offering. “Let’s make sure it sticks this time then, shall we?”

Keela gazes at his hand before accepting the aid. There is no suspicion there, only a hesitance born from years of being apart. Like revived clockwork they turn to face their foes and the sight of them together is a strange thing. Felix should hate it but it fills him with a different emotion now, of hope for something else besides vengeance and darkness. The flames begin to fall and reveal Falon’Din and their agents pulling back towards the podium. Felix isn’t the only to notice that its sole occupant no longer seems to be strapped to its surface although the portal remains.

“My son-”

Dorian stops Keela from going too far. “In good hands. Maevaris has him and will do all she can. We need you and that power of yours for this battle or I imagine none of us will make it out of here alive.”

“I can do nothing with these,” she says and gestures to the chains still around her.

“Yes, I have someone on that,” Dorian says just as Fenera emerges within their ranks in a flurry of sparks. Felix feels his heart dance to a fast tune at the sudden sight of her, a song that belongs to only her.

“Fenera!” both he and Keela shout, an action that has Dorian mumbling in disbelief. She shouldn’t be here with all the danger around, with the person that almost caused her own magic to rip her apart. He can tell by the severe cut of her features, however, that he won’t be able to convince her of leaving either. Fenera gives him a quick glance before turning the key in her hand towards the fetters holding her mother back.

Across the hall Falon’Din shouts in outrage. “No! Do not let them remove the Asca’elgar!”

The enemies approaching are thrown back when the last of the locks are opened and Keela’s imprisoned power rushes outwards. So close, Felix feels it pressing into his skin to the point of pain, but the fire and force dissipate quickly to leave her standing tall, smoke rising from skin and a strange light in her eyes.

The momentary fear disappears from Falon’Din as their men swarm around Felix and the others, as the distance between them grows and they grow nearer to the portal with every heartbeat. “You will not be enough, da’len. Not even with what you have stolen from the grasp of those more worthy. You-”

The pair turn their heads towards some unknown call, one that makes Falon’Din scowl further and fall silent. Everyone and everything seems to still like a breath held, everyone except Fenera. Felix feels her fingers brush his for an instant and looks to find her standing close. There is a question in her eyes, soft and unsure, and he’s not sure what the answer might be. What he wants and what is, is a tangle of threads too difficult to unravel right now. Even so, he finds himself chasing after her hand and holding it for a tight squeeze.

“What is it?” he asks of the distraction that has caught her mother and Falon’Din.

Fenera’s smile turns sharper as she draws daggers free. “Not what. Who.”

He doesn’t need to ask anything further. In a burst of magic a figure appears through the broken wall of the room. Felix has never met him before, but he can recognize the elf for his reputation although he wears no ancient armor and mantle anymore. Fen’Harel, the last living god of Arlathan - or so it was once believed. Felix’s feelings about the Dread Wolf are a more complicated thing, this monster from children’s tales and more recent history books, a mage so powerful he inspired divinity even if Dorian has described the patches in Solas’ threadbare slacks. He has been nothing but a villain, the uncaring god with a slow arrow that saves only what he wants to save.

Felix sees things a little different as Solas’ fierce attention falls on his family. There is relief to see Keela alive and mostly unharmed and something else entirely when he spots Fenera. Surprise and panic, emotions Felix felt but multiplied by years and affection he can’t even grasp at. Emotions that are all too human, that weave another thread of discord into Felix’s web. When Solas turns to face their foe, however, there is no softness remaining.

“Falon’Din.”

“Fen’Harel.” Falon’Din holds out their hand and light flashes to create a long scythe that they spins in sharp arches.

Keela steps forward away from their small group, the runes on her false arm beginning to glow bright. “Get our children out of here, Dorian.”

There is no wait for confirmation as she and Solas both launch towards Falon'Din at the same time, streaks of movement and flashes of magic that collide and create another wave of impact that blows across Felix’s skin. They are there one moment and gone the next, disappearing through another break in the hall and out into the open spaces of Vir'uthan.

Dorian wastes no time himself and tugs on Felix’s arm. “Come now.”

It is Fenera that resists now. “We can’t just leave-”

“We most certainly can, and we will. I am not one to sit by the wayside when the band is playing either, but trust me when I say this is a dance not meant for us. We will only be in the way. If nothing else, think of your brother.” Fenera frowns, resentment in her eyes for the trap laid, but she doesn’t argue any further. “Besides, we have our own battle still to face.”

Falon’Din may be gone but their agents remain. They form a barrier between the way towards Aneirin and Maevaris and Felix feels a rush as they approach, like he is moving towards a dip in the road taken on fast horse. “Barriers up,” Dorian says. “Aedelicus and I will take the bulk of them and I’ll hear no argument about that. Don’t let them push you out too far and if I tell you to do something don’t hesitate. And don’t-”

“We know, father. I know.”

Dorian doesn’t get to say anything further as they finally clash with the Inquisition soldiers. Even though the Archon and his captain lead them through the torrent it isn’t long before Felix comes sword to sword with an opponent. His duel is different this time - whatever advantage he had at the palace seems to be gone now for they attack with full force as if they had only been toying with him before. Vaxus’ greatsword feels like it’s trying to escape his grasp every time weapons clash with pain slamming up to his shoulders. Knowledge, he finds, is little against experience, but he shifts his feet and tries harder for there will be no surviving this defeat.

It helps that this is a fight not faced alone. When a blow catches him off guard Fenera is there to prevent the enemy’s blade from finding a home lodged in his neck. The edge of her dagger catches the sword and turns it out of their grasp before she bashes her elbow into their face, lightning and force adding to the impact. Fenera smiles at him in the aftermath but he knows her well enough to see the unrest she tries to hide. “You’re still leaving your left side unguarded, Felix. What lesson was that?”

“Eighteen.”

They work together, Fenera moving fast to cut away at the strength of mightier foes or to catch those much smaller so Felix can finish them off with a mighty sweep of Vaxus’ blade. He can’t help his mind from wandering to that night in Antiva City when they danced, how they could move as one without even thinking of it, and they fight much the same. Neither of them strike to kill, only to disarm and disengage their opponents from battle, to get to his aunt and her brother quickly and not revel in the heat of battle. Felix feels it rising in his veins, knows it would be easy to slide the tip of his sword through ribs. There is a part of him that wants to listen to the voices telling him to become the warrior from his books who felt the world tremble at their feet. 

“Shit!” Fenera moves to the right when he expected the opposite and they collide off balanced for a moment. Perhaps they aren’t too in sync just yet. The error is thankfully survivable as an arrow lodges into their enemy’s shoulder and they fall away. Felix looks up to find they’ve neared Maevaris and the palace guards and gives a quick nod to the one with an empty bow. Then he shakes his head at Fenera, at the goofy look she gives him, and the boil of his blood slows. He doesn’t want to be just a warrior, to have the world or anyone bowing before him in fear. He only wants to be a man his papa would be proud of. He wants to protect his family too.

“Down!” Dorian shouts somewhere and he obeys in an instant, pulling Fenera with him. They’ve barely hit the ground before a wave of magic full of terrors and lightning crashes above them and pummels the remaining Inquisition agents. They scream and thrash briefly before collapsing or running blindly from the things assaulting their minds. There’s a strange, quiet stillness in the aftermath, like everyone is shocked still, and Felix uses it to truly look at Fenera for the first time since arriving. The leather of her armor is ripped a little at the collar but even stained with dirt it still looks new and stiff, like she’s never needed to wear it before. There’s blood there as well, dark and dried, bright and dripping, and he hates the idea that some might be hers, that she had to spill any when he can remember the horror in her eyes from before.

A hand wraps around his arm, soft like her expression. “Hi,” she says, and in it he hears another apology, a tentative attempt to close a distance even as they are inches apart.

There’s smudges on her cheek too and he reaches out to wipe them away. The drag of his thumb sparks static that kisses his skin, the feeling warm and familiar and something to miss when it’s gone. He’s not sure what will come of all this, if they even make it back at all, but he wants something more than another closed tomb. Whatever that may be. “Hi.”

“Move, move!” They race back up to their feet at his father’s next command and pass over rumble to reach the others. Maevaris kneels with Fenera’s brother resting against her legs while the guards point arrows beyond his shoulder, but he doesn’t hear any approaching feet or mail shifting with action. Felix turns back to find the Inquisition agents a way off in a group with weapons lowered, watching them carefully but at ease, as if they’ve been told to stand down.

“What are they doing?” he asks.

“Not quite sure.” Dorian seems distracted, anxious, devastated, his gaze falling on the Inquisitor’s right hand warrior and remaining there, narrowing like he might be able to see through their armor and mask if he tries hard enough. “That soldier. They countered one of my spells with a move I haven’t seen for some time, that I’ve only seen from-”

“Ani?”

The name is said in a trembling whisper as Fenera approaches her brother. Aneirin lies still, no pulse fluttering beneath his neck, no air moving through his chest. Aunt Mae’s hands are just a few inches from his head and there are tears in the corner of her eyes when she looks up. “I’m sorry, there was- he was gone before I could do anything. I’m so, so sorry.”

Felix’s stomachs drops heavy even as his mind refuses to believe this reality. It doesn’t seem as if Fenera can accept it either as she stands there and gives little shakes of her head, her eyes looking but not seeing. “No. No he can’t be. The twins turn sixteen in two weeks. He’s been too excited because he can enroll at the Impetusari finally. He wants, he-”

“Fenera…” She shrugs off his touch, twisting away to take a few long breaths. When she turns back there is a fury to her, a madness in her eyes all fueled by grief and rage, something he has felt for so long but more potent in its new creation. He feels it in his heart, in the air thick with emotion. She doesn’t look at him but beyond and he knows her mind before she moves. “Fen, no-”

There is no stopping her. He reaches out only to touch nothing as she disappears from sight. “Fenera!”

“She’s going to get herself killed,” Dorian says as they look around the hall for her. There’s a gasp from one of the Inquisition soldiers, their body jerking violently as a dagger pierces through their chest. Fenera reemerges as they crumple to the floor and the agents move to surround her and their fallen comrade. Lightning is her element, fueling her limbs and making her quick and deadly. When one tries to lunge for her she pivots and grabs their gauntlet, vanishing for a moment and taking the arm with her, but returning without it. The soldier screams as blood pours from the amputation. The next that tries to tackle her disappears and never reappears, lost completely within the Fade.

All of this happens so fast, between a few heartbeats and only a few steps forward to chase after her. Felix is thankful Dorian doesn’t try to stop him and instead falls easily at his side, spells already sizzling in his hands. Fenera is some wild thing shouting curses in Elvhen, face twisted into a snarl as she cuts her way across a now bloody floor, more graceful and deadly than she ever is in training sessions. Like she has always been capable of such destruction, and maybe that is true with the blood that runs in her veins. Felix would maybe be impressed or disgusted or a million other things at what she’s doing if he wasn’t so terrified at what might happen to her out there alone.

He has every right to be as Falon’Din’s second approaches, stepping inside her defenses with only a few moves not even she can stop, and clamps their hand around her throat. Fenera tries to shift out of their grasp, her body shivering half gone, but magic shoots down the warrior’s hand and snakes into her. She grunts in frustration as she phases back into reality and Felix knows by the way she tries to kick and claw her way out of their grasp that she can’t escape.

“Fen!” he calls to her again as he and Dorian clash with the remaining Inquisition forces. Aedelicus is there beside him too, Maevaris not far behind sending frost and sharp icicles whizzing by his head. The warrior passes Fenera into the charge of two others and reaches back for their own sword, the glint of it sliding free a sharp jolt rushing through Felix. There are only a few enemies left standing, only a few more seconds until he can get to her. Just a little further-

A crack echoes across the hall as tails of fire wrap around Falon’Din’s general. Keela appears and yanks on the whip of magic and flame in her grasp, sending them flying into a wall that explodes in a puff of dust and stone. She flicks her wrist again and the cords of her weapon split to avoid Fenera and smack against the agents holding her hostage. They fall back and Aedelicus and Dorian are there to make sure they cause no more trouble as Keela kneels in front of her daughter. 

“Are you hurt?”

“Mamae…” All the adrenaline and fight that in Fenera’s veins is gone now, the weight of what has happened pulling her down to the ground and making her limbs quake. Whatever she replies with next is something barely audible, but Felix hears her brother’s name. 

It is clear Keela does as well by the way her head snaps up, scanning for the one missing from their ranks. When she finds her son the realization in her eyes, in the way she sucks in a breath, is something Felix can feel like a hammer against his ribs, and he would take back every time he wished to see her suffer if he could save her, save them both, from this.

It seems to take an eternity for Keela to reach Aneirin even though only a few heartbeats have passed - time is a torture, making every moment together before some fleeting thing while loss seems to go on and on forever. Felix knows this well. Her hands don’t shake as she touches her child’s ashen face, but there are fissures forming slowly across the expanse of her, tears collecting that no amount of stubborn will can stop. Fenera weeps openly, smearing blood across her cheeks in a futile attempt to repair a ruptured dam and he’s not sure he’s suffered a wound so great as the one she gives him as she looks up, all the brilliant things about her shadowed.

She doesn’t shirk away from him this time as he bends down and embraces her. Fingers grip tight to his tunic as she curls into him and buries away from all there is to face. He can’t stop himself from remembering those long days after Vaxus’ death, when he hides in his loft and closes his eyes tight, willing his papa to come and carry him into the bed like he always did. No matter how long he stays there or how many books he read, Vaxus never appears, and now Fenera will never hear brother run down the hallway again or his laughter at the pranks they pull.

“Keela.” Dorian approaches his old friend with more caution and doesn’t try to reach out, but there is remorse and understanding for her loss, a desire to comfort the unimaginable. The former Inquisitor doesn’t say anything in return, only looks at him with eyes turning heated for a moment. Felix wonders if there’s a battle raging inside her against the reality of what’s happened, or if she looks upon his father as someone who couldn’t save the one she loves too. Whatever her thoughts they pass quickly, fall away like the tears dripping to the floor.

Felix is almost glad when the quiet is interrupted by distracting chaos. A great force blows a hole in the ceiling and he throws a quick barrier up to protect himself and Fenera from the debris that rains down. When the dust clears it reveals Solas standing over a prone Falon’Din with firing burning blue in his eyes. The light snaps out briefly when he pauses to take in the shattered remains of his family. A deep, wretched pain grabs hold of him, makes him sway and release his hold on Falon’Din so they can move again. There are no words spoken but Felix can see a silent conversation happening between mother and father, a shared, desperate sorrow changing into furious, demanding retribution.

The ground trembles, the air turning hot and thick. Solas’ eyes begin to burn again but now the flames are red, the fire curling above his temples. He lifts his hand and Falon’Din follows no matter how the god tries to fight it, their body rising until they are several inches in the air. A strange magic begins to affect them as their feet cover in a hard stone, replacing bone and tissue as it continues up their legs. Felix has read about this power, has seen the battlefields marked by stone soldiers in drawings, but never thought to see it with his own eyes.

Falon’Din snarls and tries to slow the progression by pushing back to some degree, but there is true fear building in their eyes. When the stone consumes everything almost to their waist, the soon to be former Inquisitor changes tactics. “Only I can bring him back. Kill me and he is lost to you forever, Fen’Harel. Sarevas’Din walk Thedas once more.”

“Solas?” Keela calls, quiet and wondering. A muscle in Solas’ jaw clenches like he might deny her request, but in the end he addresses it for the hope in her voice.

“Sarevas’Din were the high priests of Falon’Din. Those chose ingested a poison and perished only to be brought back by their god’s blessing. They were not the mindless spirits summoned by necromancers, but souls returned to their flesh in full only now bound to a will not their own. A strange ritual but one the Evanuris did not concern themselves with until Falon’Din led an army of Sarevas’Din in an attempt to overthrow Arlathan. They proved a difficult foe, for death does not come easily to those that have overcome it before. The coup failed regardless and as punishment the Sarevas’Din were destroyed and Falon’Din’s knowledge of the ritual barred and burned from all memory.”

Felix looks to his father to catch his thoughts on such a thing, but Dorian’s attention is latched onto somewhere else, someone else. He watches Falon’Din’s second collect themselves from where Keela threw them, no worse for wear besides their armor dented and dusted. It is Dorian that looks wounded, slashed open and bleeding a growing distress. Felix doesn’t know what it means but nervousness begins to bloom inside him, its presence made all the stronger as Falon’Din turns their attention to their trusted companion as well.

“And is the one who bound my mind still alive to hold the chains? With Mythal’s death I was freed. Bear witness to my might, and my mercy.”

The warrior reaches up and removes their cowl to reveal short, auburn hair turning white, and the feelings inside Felix begin to swarm at the threat of impending danger, a danger he doesn’t understand completely until they pull away their mask next. It is his turn to try and feel grounded as he clutches to Fenera’s arm, for he knows the color of these eyes, has traced adventure from the scars on this face. Age has added new features to map out, but there can be no mistake. He can hear a voice singing lullabies and realizes why it sounded so familiar in the ballroom despite the distortion of the mask. He knows who they are, but he cannot understand how any of this could be even with the history of it still ringing in his ears. Felix can’t move, can’t breathe, locked in an empty tomb belonging to the dead right before him, looking at him like he is the only thing that has ever kept them alive.

“Pa…Papa?”

It is him. Vaxus Trevelyan, not some unblinking, exacting statue in a cold crypt, but breathing, solid but soft, better than any replica could ever be. Dorian takes a place half in front of him, not willing to deny him the possibility ahead but distrusting all that may come of it. Even so, there is a longing in his voice that can’t be stopped. “Amatus?”

It looks like Vaxus tries to move, tries to speak, but the results only end with silence as frustrated tears race down his cheeks. He glances between them, his eyes even touching Keela’s, who seems like she can’t find a breath against all that has transpired either, but he always returns to his son.

“My greatest friend,” comes Falon’Din’s voice, full and smug. “I called out to him and he replied, cared for my broken body as I slowly recovered my true strength. I promised I would bring him to this moment and I have kept my word, when so many others failed to do the same. Go on, ma falon, speak.”

A sigh of immense relief, and then, “ _Felix_.”

He doesn’t remember standing, doesn’t remember taking a few steps forward, but Felix comes back to himself when Dorian keeps him from rushing blind by tears and this sudden, restless elation exploding inside him. He can’t understand why his father is holding him back, can’t comprehend the aching expression he finds when he looks.

Vaxus seems to understand what he cannot, smiling and weeping at the same time just as they are, relieved even as he takes a few step back. “It’s all right,” he says, although nothing feels that way even though it should. “I’m sorry for everything, I couldn’t…I love you. I have for all this time.”

Realization finally dawns over Felix and he feels like screaming - his papa is here but he isn’t for he is Falon’Din’s, alive but a puppet of his control. It is a thing everyone already knows, a truth that makes Solas lift the fabled god of death further from the floor. “You would turn my son into your chattel and believe I would desire this?”

“I imagine you want him alive, lethallin, and alive he would be. Although unlike Vaxus, for he would be bound to me quite intimately to ensure my own continued existence, of course, but alive all the same. Is my life worth his?”

Solas looks to Keela again, time stretching everything to an unnatural clarity - Felix sees Falon’Din’s heartbeat thrumming in their neck, hears the way Keela’s fingers crinkle the fabric of Aneirin’s shirt and the creak of Fenera’s leather behind him, feels his father’s intake of breath like it is his own lungs, sees Vaxus’ wishes for freedom, for _them_ , as if they were words written across his skin. Reality catches up with itself in quick fashion when Keela lets out a cry and drops her head to her son’s chest. 

The red flames return to the Dread Wolf’s eyes. “No, it is not.”

“No!” Fenera screams at Felix’s side as her father swallows Falon’Din completely with his power, the Evanuris’ face chiseled into surprised horror. In a flash, fire races from their feet to their head to leave nothing but a pile of ash on the ground where a god of Arlathan once was. The stunned silence at what has happened doesn’t last long as Fenera leaps forward. “No! You could have saved him! Why? Why!”

There is more said in a language Felix doesn’t know in between angry sobs until Solas catches the fists that assault him and brings his daughter into arms that she resists at first. She is unable to do so for long against the offer of comfort given, however, and Felix turns his attention away to seek out his own solace. In the aftermath, Vaxus has fallen to his knees, head bowed down to the floor, back moving quickly with steadying breaths. Dorian moves to approach, glancing back to give Felix a warning look before he goes further, a warning Felix ignores as he treads over his father’s footsteps not far behind.

“Vaxus?”

“They’re gone,” he says and it’s still a shock to hear his voice again. Vaxus gestures to his head, fingers shaking. “They’re  _gone_.”

“Are you…”

Eyes lift, filled with bright tears made brighter by his smile. “I’m free.”

Felix doesn’t care if it’s true or not anymore. He doesn’t let anything stop him from diving towards and embracing his papa after all this time. All his years of dreaming, of creating fairy tales of fathers returning from battle, of wishing for vengeance to ease the ache in his heart. All of it is nothing to the way he feels when Vaxus holds him tight in return, as his name is said with all the love and adoration that he remembers. He doesn’t mind when Dorian joins in at his side, isn’t sure what tears belong to who as cheeks brush and words are whispered in the space between them - once so vast and now nothing at all. He doesn’t mind giving his parents a moment to themselves either, once embarrassed to see them sharing affection and now only glad that they can once more.

Dorian runs a touch over the beard on Vaxus’ face, well-kept and peppered white. “Look what happens when I let you from my sight for a moment. You go and grow this atrocity again. Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed your years with it.” The Archon swallows thickly, voice breaking and bravado falling away. “Is this real? If it isn’t I’m going to be very cross with you, again.”

Vaxus takes Dorian’s hand into his and kisses the knuckles. “I’m here. I’m sorry it took me so long to get back to you.”

Felix knows he shouldn’t but he can’t help the laughter that bubbles up inside him created by this impossible reunion although for a few moments he can’t really remember why it is wrong. There is more to say, about how Vaxus tries to reach them throughout the years but never could, how close he came without them knowing, how he has watched from afar and is so proud of the progress they’ve made, who they’ve become, but none of that matters against the fact that he is here, that they are all together again.

The happiness in his heart doesn’t fade, but eventually it parts just enough for him to see that joy is something held tight to their small circle for mourning has consumed the rest of Vir’uthan. Fenera paces a short line behind her parents as they kneel on the ground by their son. Felix feels horrible - for the family he has gained she has lost hers, and here he has been laughing where she could hear. But there is no malice for him when he catches her gaze, no room for it in her cage of grief. Not yet. He can see the beginnings of it, in the way her fists are white knuckled against her thighs, in the way he knows she sees her brother’s last moments over and over again and soon it will overlap everything that was ever good.

They keep their distance. Maevaris and the others come to join them, more hugs and well wishes being spread between them but with a quiet reverence. Felix wants to do something but he stays close to his fathers, listens with half an ear as Dorian makes preparations to leave although they linger. What happens to the Inquisition and Lavellan is not their concern, but it is, for their bloodlines are connected no matter how they have tried to untangle, deny, or forget them.

“This isn’t right,” Vaxus says, half standing between his family and the one he has always been a part of too. Keela lifts her head briefly, her tears drying but her anguish no less harsh for their loss, and she smiles - just something small, something broken and fleeting, gone in the flood her family is swept into, but she looks between her long lost friends and finds an ember of happiness for them before she can’t hold the flame any longer, and Felix feels pathetic for ever thinking her a monster.

“We’ll do what we can for them. They’ll need time,” Dorian says, heavy with experience. Vaxus looks at him, wheels of thought churning in clear eyes, and Dorian narrows his again. “What are you thinking?”

Vaxus doesn’t answer right away. Instead he hugs them again, pressing kisses to their temples before pulling away and leaving them in a daze. “I’m sorry, just one more foolish thing.”

“Vaxus?” He jogs away from his family, away from Keela’s, towards the center of the room where the podium is, where-Dorian chases after him with Felix not far behind, hearts hammering, elation crashing hard. Falon’Din’s portal still stands, smaller and quieter than before, but still swirling and open. Open enough for someone to slip through. The plan is an obvious one as Vaxus jumps swiftly onto the creaking platform, as he pulls a dagger free from his belt and removes one of his gauntlets. “You can’t, Vaxus. Without Falon’Din’s blood-”

“You need your own blood to send yourself back. That’s how it works. I’ll go back and fix all this.” His attention turns towards the others in the room. “For everyone.”

“There are thousands of variables,” Solas says as he rises. “To erase decades of time, the possible damage-”

Fenera stops her father, lightning crackling at her fingertips. “Do it!” she shouts and Felix feels a bolt of betrayal through his chest. From her, from his papa. They have a chance for a future and he would throw it all away for hoping the past is something that can even be changed. But what if - what if the last twenty years weren’t stolen from them? What if it wasn’t hatred that bound them all, but something else? What if…

“But we just got you back,” he finds himself saying and Vaxus’ gaze softens.

“Amatus…”

“I’ll keep my promise.” Vaxus drags the weapon across his forearm, rolling it through the wound to coat the blade red. He smiles one last smile as Dorian grasps tightly to Felix’s hand and they hold onto to each other, to this hope and happiness and pray that it won’t be taken away once more. “I love you. I’ll see you soon.”

He thrusts the dagger beyond the portal’s plane and the hall explodes into white light, blazing and all consuming. Felix shuts his eyes and thinks of a house by the sea and stairs made of glass before the world falls away beneath his feet. 

 

art by trashwarden


	20. The Likeness of Felix Pavus

He is told it is an exacting replica.

There is no doubt that the sculptor is very skilled. The details are incredible - thick hair that seems impossibly soft, a cloud that you might caress, each piece of thick, straight brows chiseled with painstaking patience. Serious eyes and a set mouth looking into some unknown horizon, so alive one can practically see the endless thoughts and plans streaming from a complex mind. There is a promise to the pose, noble youth poised on the edge of greatness, that inspires strength and hope, dedication and diligence.

 _The Likeness of Felix Pavus_ it says on a polished plaque below. A veritable masterpiece it is, but it is not how Vaxus pictures his son.

It is all true yet there is more the stone doesn’t reveal. A curiosity as clear as blue eyes, wide as they take in the world around them, but shyness there too not shown that keeps him at the margins. Those eyes often roll skywards in consternation that is never unkind or earnest, only part of a game that is often played with quick quips of his own, jabs that can smart but are never barbed. He keeps waiting for the sculpture to change, for the marbled mouth to crack into a wide grin and easy laughter that makes his heart soar. His son has not been formed only by harder things, not this time, and Maker knows that he has never been as grateful for something as he is for this.

“Felix! Where is that- ah, Amatus.” He doesn’t have to turn around to know who it is that enters, but he does anyways - he never wants to miss a moment offered to do so, however small it might be. Dorian approaches swathed in heavy robes, a light smile lighting up his face. “Have you seen our guest of honor?”

“Working in the alchemy chamber, I think.”

“I should think hiding there is a more accurate description.” Dorian stops by his side, hip brushing against his, eyes turning towards the busts before them. “Quite a fetching family we are, wouldn’t you agree?”

Three figures representing the noble family of Pavus sit on sturdy podiums in an alcove of their mansion's wide foyer. The space is lined with expensive murals and tapestries, golden trinkets and priceless pottery, but the little corner here is what is most precious to Vaxus. All of them, together. He knows there was once a time when reality was crueler. He remembers these times in the dark flashes of dreams, in waking hours when what should have happened superimposes itself on what is now. Sometimes he wakes, sweat soaked and dizzy, and forgets where and when he is, worries that one day he might awaken and realize this was nothing but wishful thinking.

“I think we look great. Except they got your mouth wrong.”

“Wrong? How do you mean?” Dorian scowls, leaning further to get a better look at his own sculpture. “I thought Peitrus captured me perfectly.”

Vaxus grabs Dorian’s chin and gently pulls him closer, presses lips to his, a kiss soft and lingering and loving. When they part Dorian keeps his eyes closed for a moment more in open bliss, and his chest warms at the wondrous sight. “You’re right. Perfect.”

“Awful, truly,” Dorian huffs, but the pleased blush on his cheeks reveals his real thoughts on the matter. So does the fact that he tugs Vaxus in for another embrace, one with heat and yearning and a promise whispered upon his tongue. Vaxus is wrong- all that matters is that his family is happy, and he can taste it in this desire and devotion that has only grown stronger throughout the years, in the way there is no longer a hesitancy to reach out and hope for more.  “Do you know how much I adore you?”

“Even though I’m awful?”

“Because of it, actually. You’ve made quite a mess of me, Vaxus Trevelyan. I hope you’re satisfied.” The memories of another life swell up inside him, of a world when his absence would have made Dorian say the same thing but with a bitter cut to his mouth instead of a smile full of jest.

"And are you? Satisfied?" he asks suddenly, unable to stop himself. It is suddenly too difficult to push down on what was, what could have been again, knowing where they could have stood today if things had been different. Vaxus thinks of the finer robes belonging to royalty, the sprawling palace and all its luxuries, the place of power and prestige earned from all the years of pushing forward. He remembers the conversations, the debates, the rising tide of supporters rallying behind Dorian all clamoring for him to become Tevinter's next ruler. And he remembers Dorian turning it all down with a small smile and a tight squeeze of his hand. "You could have had more."

“More of what? Admirers? Wealth? Good sense?” He smiles crookedly. “Children? If you really want to revisit that old discuss-”

Vaxus gives a short laugh. “No. I...” _I changed the world and everything in it, for the better I hope, but I can’t know. I changed you, and it terrifies me._ “I just want you to be happy.”

“I am. Whatever doubts you have about that, put them aside. If I want anything more for myself I will take it, you have no need to worry over that. In fact, I do believe you are quite responsible for inspiring that line of thinking.” Dorian touches his arm, gentle like the patient look of his gaze. “My happiness is not what I worry over, amatus.”

Vaxus sees the same question in his husband’s eyes that has been there for the last two decades, the one that follows him home from a successful mission and Dorian knows there is something more behind those tears of happiness, in the way Vaxus clutches to his family too tight. A question that cannot be answered for it is a burden that he will carry for them, one he is willing to repeat a thousand times if necessary. One he will never regret despite the ghosts that linger.

He replies with a smile that he means - he _is_ happy, he is here, and there can be no wasting the opportunity. "I'm happy too. More than you could possibly imagine."

“Good. Let us go collect Felix before he creates some potion to make himself invisible and spends the whole night hidden in a corner.”

They do not find Felix in the alchemy workshop. Servants guide them to another wing of the house and Vaxus feels silly for not thinking to look for him here first. He can recognize the gentle grind of metal against stone from a lifetime of experiences and knows what he’ll see before they even cross the threshold. Felix sits with his greatsword balanced across knees and runs a whetstone across an edge slowly, brows creased with care for the task. Vaxus thinks of his son’s tangible excitement this morning when he presented it as a gift - all those years of staring at it in wonder on the wall, of begging Vax to let him try it during sparring, of long days spent training for the strength and knowledge to wield it finally paying off and worth every second.

Felix looks at them with a slightly guilty turn of his lips, but there is still too much happiness about him to mean it, a fact made obvious by him sitting here whittling away time when he is supposed to be elsewhere - and a thing Vaxus cannot muster even an ounce of annoyance for. His son deserves it and should have it after all this time and this monumental day seems as good as any to pass it on. He thinks about Dorian’s worried objections years ago but he also remembers the man who stood tall and defiant, pointing the old sword at his chest in a crumbling temple, and has always known it would be in good hands.

“Do you intend on sleeping with that thing now? Not exactly the bedfellow I’ve been hinting at all these years,” Dorian says and cheeks flush. “Planning on avoiding your own celebration all night as well?”

Felix perks up. “Is that an option?”

“Certainly not. I didn’t spend several weeks planning this so Master Venlurian would be the only one to enjoy it, that buffoon. At least you had the good sense to remove your tunic before getting it filthy. Wash those hands and let’s be on our way. Amatus, would you kindly make sure our son is ready before the next age begins?”

“You heard him,” Vaxus says as Dorian leaves the room to see to last minute preparations.

Felix lets out a long sigh but obeys. Vaxus watches as he carefully puts away the tools exactly as they were and wipes the blade clean one last time before reverently returning it to its place on the far wall. It reminds him of another room, in another life. A room that was more a museum than the scuffed and tangled one they have now. He never made use of that room in _the before_ , only steps foot into it once when Falon’Din has him sneak into the palace and steal his sword and his son. He hates every second of it, raging against the command controlling his veins even knowing it is forever futile. Yet when he walks into his unused training room there is a moment he thinks the spell might break for there is so much care and love and longing in every corner that no command can stop the tears from falling. They were always reaching for him, as he was always reaching for them.

“Is something wrong?”

Sharp eyes watch him with concern, the same ageless suspicion Dorian often wears even if Vaxus has tried to hide it from his son most of all. He’s so very clever, so much like his father, and he can only be thankful for that. Vaxus pulls him in for a quick hug to reassure them both. “No. I’m just proud of you, Felix. Glad I could be here on such a big day.”

“Thanks. And where else would you be?” Felix asks with a joke in his grin as they part, and Vaxus ignores the memories of cold laughter and colder chains.

He rests an arm around his son’s shoulder. “I think you’ll have a good time tonight.”

Felix looks up at him with a different kind of suspicion. “Why?”

He shrugs innocently. A few things are different in this world remade by his choice, but not everything. “Just a father’s intuition. Come on. Don’t want to keep your adoring fans waiting.”  

* * *

 

They announce his father first and the assembled stand to attention for Magister Pavus. The kingdom still feels the effects of the civil war where Dorian and his Lucerni were key players, notorious for more reasons than one. Being comfortable in a large crowd is something Felix didn't inherit from his parents - he's glad he gets to stay below notice most days, but it makes him hesitant on nights like this when he can't escape. He hopes tonight goes fast, that despite being the center of attention he will be shrouded by all the activities and conversations to come. When it’s his time to step forward he casts a quick look back at Vaxus for strength who offers a goofy grin and a exuberant thumbs up. Both bolster Felix and make him laugh. He can always count on him to make things easier.

Thankfully, there are no long speeches or longer tests to begin, only polite clapping and a wreath of gold leaves placed atop his head. It’s been less than a day but Felix doesn’t think he’ll ever get over the fact that he’s finally an altus. A seat in the magisterium awaits him whenever his father steps down, but that is for a day far in the future - if it is what he wants at all. He flexes his hand, remembering the leather of the Trevelyan sword in his grasp. His fathers have taught him well, with magic and sword alike, so whatever he decides he knows their support will see him through.

“Do try to have a good time,” Dorian says as they meet at the bottom of the platform. “And do let me know if any of the beautiful women in the crowd catch your-”

“Father.”

“Ah, here comes one now.” Felix’s momentary panic is relieved when he recognizes the figure that approaches. She is without her customary robes of white and gold and red, but even without them and the always lingering effects of her illness that almost claimed her life years ago, the Divine carries herself with ecclesiastic grace in a violet gown layered in silver. Dorian takes her hand and kisses the sparkling signet ring she wears with a secretive smirk. “My dear Victoria.”

“Don't be devious, Dorian. You know I can only be Madame de Fer while I am in Tevinter.”

“Thank you for coming,” Felix says and she tuts gently, the end of echoing into a small chain of coughs. The attendant at her side offers a handkerchief, the exchange so quick it goes by unnoticed by many. 

“Of course my dear. We are all very proud of you. I’ve had a gift made to celebrate your success and sent ahead to your rooms. Shall the four of us meet tomorrow for lunch to discuss it?”

“Yes, thank you!”

“Wonderful. It seems like little expense has been spared for tonight’s festivities.” Vivienne glances towards the walls where fire dancers and musicians perform and acrobats swing from cloth hanging from the ceiling. There are magical decorations drifting above them too, explosions of sparks and colors in different patterns, animals and buildings and even people dancing and moving, and they disappear before getting too far to the ground only to begin again.

Dorian smiles, chest puffing out a bit. “Marvelous isn’t it?”

“If somewhat ostentatious,” a new voice suggests, an offense that would have his eyes darkening for a battle ahead, but instead there is only a long suffering look of friendship on his father’s face as he greets Solas.

“Ah, yes. You would know, being our resident elven expert on the preposterous and pretentious,” Dorian retorts.

It’s been some time since Felix last saw Solas for he isn’t known to venture far from Elvhenan or attend many functions where they might interact. Felix’s coursework for the past few years has kept him from attending many things himself. He looks no different than the picture memory paints, straight backed and well-dressed despite his father’s often recollections of a time when it wasn’t so. It’s always a strange thing to stand in his presence - Solas has never been anything but kind to him in the past, but he is still _Fen’Harel_ , and all the sideways glances being thrown their way confirm it.

“Solas, what a surprise to see you here. I do hope you didn’t have to put any important plans on hold to come. I’m sure Lord Pavus here would have understood your absence,” Vivienne says, earning a snort of laughter from Dorian.

“A pleasure to see you, Madame de Fer, and to know your good humors have not changed.”

“At least you brought your better half.” Dorian steps forward and gives an embrace to the one at Solas’ side, someone Felix is much more familiar with. He sees Keela Lavellan often, here at home when he returns for holidays from university and every conference that requires representatives from the different regions to attend. She has even assisted Vaxus with training a few times when Felix expresses interest in sword and shield. He’s abandoned calling her aunt as age has made it embarrassing, but she is there at important moments in his life like many of his fathers’ many friends.

“Hello, darling.” Vivienne gives her friend a kiss on the cheek. “Did you get my note?”

“I did. A day at Ostia’s sounds lovely.” Keela reaches for Felix’s hand and gives it a strong shake. “Congratulations, Felix.”

“Yes, congratulations,” Solas echoes. “Becoming an altus at such a young age is a worthy feat. Especially now that the title is earned instead of inherited. So many unqualified mages once held the position.”

Dorian shakes his head. “So quick to the quick. I’ll have you know I’ve been preparing for the possibility.”

“I’m sure Solas has given little thought to it, as he usually does for all things,” Vivienne says, sniffing delicately.

“Maker, enough already. It’s not your party,” Vaxus intervenes.

“No, I don’t mind-”

Vaxus wraps an arm around Felix again, hand briefly covering his smile. He likes when his father and his friends bicker like some dance with words. “Did you bring the children?”

“The twins are at home. Fenera is…” Keela looks around, frowning slightly.

“Should we be worried?”

“More than likely.”

“We’ll go look for her and let these three compare sizes.” Vaxus tugs him away and out into the middle of the hall.

“We don’t _have_ to go looking for her,” Felix mutters when they’re far enough away.

“You’re not still mad about the slugs are you?” Vaxus asks. “That was ten years ago. And it _was_ kind of funny.”

“No, it’s just-” He sighs, bites his tongue. It’s been almost five years since he saw her last. She is a teenager, chasing him around for attention with absurd jokes and ideas. He didn’t used to mind so much when they were younger for she is _fun_ , daring, keeping up and outpacing him sometimes when they’ve practiced together, and always finding a way to try and make something exciting, but he has no interest in childish things anymore and instead is looking and planning for his future. It doesn’t help that Dorian seems to have long been secretly writing their wedding vows since birth. After their last encounter, Felix has made every excuse to be somewhere else, doing anything else. He can’t imagine Fenera has grown up all that much now or that they would ever get along as anything more than casual acquaintances.

Others greet him as they move through the revelry, magisters and other altus, lords and ladies from nearby kingdoms. Mae appears with congratulations and Cassandra in tow, the latter looking suspicious at all the magic and fanfare around but greeting him warmly with a few words of praise. There have been training sessions with both of them too, potions with Mae and positions with Cassandra - at least until one of his fathers gets into a debate with their friends, but they are some of his fondest lessons.

“Felix!” He’s assaulted by a pair of arms that squeeze the breath from him for a moment but he doesn’t fret - he knows who they are, can recognize the scents of berries and blood lotus that smell like a part of home. “I’ve missed you.”

“It’s only been a few hours, Aunt Val.”

Vaxus’ sister makes a disagreeable noise, disregarding his argument with a wave of her hand. “We have lots of time to make up for after my long absence being dragged around the continent by a mad man. Speaking of, look who decided to finally show up!”

Felix tries not to laugh at the way Cassandra’s eyes go wide as Carver Hawke joins their group, an arm wrapping around Val’s waist. “I don’t remember you complaining while you laid on the beach in Antiva last week, but I guess I couldn’t hear you when I was working the whole time. Sorry I missed the big day, Felix.”

“It’s fine.”

It isn’t long before their conversation becomes boisterous and animated and Felix watches it all with a growing smile. Yesterday he is nothing but nerves, drills running through his head as he tries to keep doubts at bay, alone save for his knowledge and the encouraging words of his family. It is something to look around and find familiar faces that were so convinced of his victory they had no doubts, his father confident enough to plan this party months in advance. Warmth blossoms in his heart to know that even if he had failed they would still be here to offer comfort.

After a while he excuses himself to forage among the wide spread of delicacies and desserts. His mouth waters to smell smoked meat and he grabs a few skewered pieces to add to a plate quickly overloading. It tastes even better and he’s quick to wolf a few down, realizing he barely ate anything at all since yesterday being anxious about the test and finding little time regardless. He’s about to go back for a second helping when a voice stops him.

“Nice party.”

His eyes are drawn to her dress first. It’s impossible to avoid, some magical creation of black lace that’s like it’s not even there in some places, patches of skin peeking through at hips and arms, legs and stomach. There is more there too, dark purple tattoos that swirl and curl on display all over, and he knows he’s been staring too long. He tries to find a safe place to land, but she turns away from him to grab something from the table when he looks, a smirk turning her lips up, and he’s further distracted by the wide open expanse of her back on display, at the wolf that stares back at him drawn in that same, strange ink.

“It’s been awhile, Felix Pavus.” She pops a strawberry in her mouth and it might be just his imagination, but it seems like she lets her finger linger there a little longer than necessary. Suddenly it feels a hundred degrees hotter in the wide open hall and all thoughts of training and family fly from his mind. He focuses on her face finding golden eyes and freckles and...recognition hits him hard and it’s some miracle he manages to keep his jaw from dropping.

“Fenera?”

“Yeah it’s me. Didn’t think you’d remember! Have you been avoiding me?”

“What? N-no, I, uh…” His mind struggles for words. This is the same person he used to play catch with, the same one that had pigtails and missing teeth, the same one that practically attached herself to his ankles like a shadow for almost a whole summer until he thought he might go mad. Without much thought he can remember her favorite food, that she hates chess. He shouldn’t be so tongue tied over someone he knows, and yet she’s tangling him all into knots and she hasn’t even done anything but stand there and look...

“You look...nice,” he says, lamely, and knows he would be failing if this was another test.

“Thanks.” Her eyes walk up and down him. “So do you. You’ve been training hard since we last met. I could probably still take you though. Remember when I beat you at the lake?”

“You did not.”

She tilts her head, looking thoughtful. “Nope. Pretty sure I thrashed you.”

Felix crosses his arms even as he relaxes somewhat, the old memories bridging a gap between now and then that seemed impassible just a moment ago. “I threw your practice sword in the water.”

“That was cheating. And mean, by the way.” She reaches out and punches his shoulder lightly. “ _You_ were mean.”

“Sorry.”

“You could make it up to me. Do you dance, Master Pavus?”

“I, well...I could, I can.” He takes a breath and holds out his hand, amazed at the fact he’s even doing so. Usually he avoids such things if he can help it, begging his father to burn any dance card or leave it off any of their get-togethers altogether. When Fenera places her hand in his there’s a buzz, her magic he thinks, something that tingles up his arm warm and vibrant. “Do you prefer lightning?”

“How very observant. Guess I shouldn’t expect any less from an altus.” They swing into place on the dance floor and he misses the first step, too concentrated for a second on his hand between her exposed shoulders. She laughs but it isn’t unkind, only giddy and a little infectious as he finds himself smiling along. “Hmm, my turn for a question. Are you still mad at me for the slugs?”

He laughs in earnest this time. “No.”

“Good. Now ask me something else. Oh! I know a game we could play…”

The rest of the party begins to fall away as they spin around the floor and he forgets to count measures and steps in his mind. It’s easy to flow into a rhythm even as they try to figure out questions to ask one another, even as she stops to imitate how her brother looked after one of his latest failed experiments, even though he knows there are people watching them and pausing to look when they laugh. He’s glad to have been seemingly wrong about this - maybe they could be more than casual acquaintances, or at least it’s a thought trickling into his mind more and more with each new step.

Felix doesn’t know how long they stay out there on the floor, but eventually they come spiraling away from it and land somewhere to catch their breaths as the music ends and a quick trumpet echoes above them. His fathers take to the raised platform again and Dorian lifts a glass high in the air. “I would like to propose a toast to my son on this auspicious evening. The empire should consider itself lucky to have such a skilled and respectable citizen rising within its ranks. As his parents, we could not be more grateful and proud of the man he has become.”

A servant brings a tray before him with a few glasses of wine, but his eyes are on Dorian and Vaxus, watching their smiles that he can’t help but return. He’s grateful for them too, for all the love and support constant throughout his life, proud as well of all they’ve accomplished. Proud of his family. Without caring, he reaches for a glass of something red to join in the celebration.

“Yeah I’ll just take that one.” Fenera switches their wine, giving him a white instead. “There you go.”

“To Felix!” Vaxus shouts.

“To Felix!” the rest of the room replies, saluting their glasses higher before taking sips of their drink. He takes a modest gulp of his own, the flavor sweet and mild, and doesn’t notice how Fenera only brings the glass to her mouth.

"So, do you-”

“By the Maker!”

He can hear Cassandra’s exclamation from across the room and the crowd parts to let him see what has caused her distress. Maevaris is quickly turning green, the color spreading up her arms and neck and growing darker until it reaches her crown. There are other calls of alarm as more and more people change color - one of the Chantry’s sisters, Magister Venlurian, a few of Felix’s classmates. They don’t claw at their skin or scream in pain, or fall to the floor like it is some poison, only glare in shock at their sudden new pigment. There are a few voices deep with indignation that begin to announce their concerns, but there is laughter too after everyone lets go of held breaths and worries.

At his side, Fenera snorts and he turns to find her hiding a wide smirk behind a hand, silent snickering shaking her shoulders. He looks between her and those afflicted, notices that they all seem to be clutching the same dark wine she has in her grasp too. “Did you...did you put a potion in the wine?”

Her amusements breaks free. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. What a crazy acciden-yeah, it was me. Did you see Aunt Cass’ face? And your dad?”

Felix looks to find Dorian hovering over Vaxus, a hand glowing with magic and brow glowering while Vaxus simply laughs, and suddenly Felix is too, loud and carefree. It’s stupid and childish, but it is something to see half of Tevinter’s, and even the world’s most influential people, as green as a frog. He’s a little captivated, too, by the way Fenera’s eyes sparkle with happy tears, bright like glistening stars.

Her expression changes in an instant, however, her hand grasping his arm tightly, and he follows the line of her sight to find her mother with a hard and knowing expression. When Keela starts to step towards them, Fenera makes a frantic noise and tugs on his tunic. “Come on!”

“To where?”

“Anywhere! Save me, Felix Pavus.”

There’s a pause as he thinks for a moment of the crowd and the people still wanting to speak to him, of the lecture he’s liable to get later for running off and being an unnecessary accomplice to these crimes, but he looks at her again and feels pulled by invisible strings and wants to see where they might lead. Felix grabs her hand and leads her out into the night, the sounds of the party dying and their laughter growing.

He doesn’t have a horrible time, all things considered.

  



End file.
